Andy Burnham is using rhetoric to detract from what devolution really is, writes the GB News Primetime Producer
Andy Burnham’s first major policy speech since swooping on Westminster - and soon No10 - after years nestling in the comfort of a cushty civic job in the Labour heartlands whilst the deposed lame duck Keir Starmer rebuilt their party into an electoral force after the near-fatal toxification of the Corbyn years centred on one thing, and only one. Not governing from Westminster.
His beloved idea of a “No10 North” is the culmination of a political delusion he has fostered since becoming the Mayor of Greater Manchester.
With his near-inevitable coronation as Labour leader and thereby Prime Minister mere weeks away, Mr Burnham argues that all of Britain’s problems stem from an over-centralised Westminster and that devolving more powers to regional authorities is the solution.
He has even described his proposal as the biggest rebalancing of power in modern British history, with a Manchester-based Government operation acting as the “nerve centre of a rewired Britain”.
But in reality, what Andy Burnham is doing is using rhetoric to detract from what devolution really is. He and other advocates of the system will tell you it’s empowering the regions and spreading Government authority beyond London.
But in truth and practice, it is simply more Government: more state control, more layers of bureaucracy, more tax, more spending, and more politicians.
Devolution in England will never genuinely transfer any meaningful power away from Westminster. Parliament is still sovereign regardless of how many new councils or authorities it names after towns and cities.
Every mayor, combined authority and devolved institution exists only because Parliament allows it to. Westminster can alter its powers, abolish them or rewrite the rules whenever it chooses.
That means devolution in England is not real constitutional decentralisation. It is simply more layers of administration between the taxpayer and the Government.
Instead of simplifying Government and increasing accountability, England has accumulated metro mayors, combined authorities, strategic partnerships, regional boards and countless quangos, each with their own executives, officers, consultants and communications teams.
This doesn’t disempower Whitehall - it merely duplicates a broken system clogged to a standstill with process and paperwork. The only difference is it’s outside London.
There is also an inconvenient and often overlooked political element to devolution. Overinflated devolved authorities often include rural communities alongside major cities.
The political and financial centre point almost always becomes the urban areas with the most people and the most votes.
Rural and semi-rural communities covered by devolved authorities contribute significant tax revenue while seeing comparatively less investment than the city centres.
That political imbalance of a system based on a network of devolved bodies is furthered when we consider that electoral support comes overwhelmingly from England’s major cities - traditionally and with few exceptions dominated by the Labour Party.
It is therefore rational for Labour politicians to prioritise urban investment where most of their votes are concentrated. Rural England has long complained it receives less attention and investment, and larger devolved authorities risk reinforcing that imbalance rather than ‘levelling-up’ as Boris Johnson liked to call it.
Leaving to one side the question of pragmatism, practicality and bureaucracy, what does devolution do to the very meaning of being English?
England is one nation under one Parliament under one Crown. Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cornwall, Kent and Northumberland all boast proud local identities, cultures and quirks. But those identities are part of common English unity. This is a wonderful element of Britain that Andy Burnham, and his former boss Sit Anthony Charles Lynton Blair, the architect of unprecedented levels of constitutional vandalism, seem to see as a problem to be solved rather than a virtue to be thankful for.
Instead of asking what is good for England, politics increasingly asks what is good for Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham or the North East. It creates political borders that have not existed for centuries.
That is why devolution is fundamentally at odds with the idea of England itself. A country is strengthened by its institutions and identity, not by multiplying regional governments with competing mandates and grievances.
Local councils already exist to deliver local services. Creating ever-larger regional authorities, in practice, does nothing but insert yet another political tier between the people and Parliament. Rather than strengthening national cohesion, it risks weakening it by encouraging regional identities to become political identities.
This is laid bare with Andy Burnham’s relentless pursuit of being seen as the personification of ‘the north’ - though someone ought to remind him that northerners can and do put on a proper shirt - whilst neglecting to include anywhere without a Manchester postcode. He seems to forget that Yorkshire, Durham, Northumberland, Cumbria and Newcastle even exist at all.
This also helps explain the rhetoric surrounding Burnham’s latest speech. His argument depends heavily on the claim that Britain’s difficulties are solely attributable to the systematic failure of Westminster,
Westminster makes mistakes, and when analysing Andy Burnham as today’s version of himself, blaming Westminster serves an obvious purpose.
If the electorate can be persuaded that ‘London’ is the cause of every problem, then more regionality should, on paper, be the obvious cure. But this is where semantics trounce reality.
It risks fostering an unnecessary sense of grievance between different parts of England. The divide between the North and South is one we are all familiar with, and one that every government since Mrs Thatcher has promised a solution to.
But what Andy Burnham is failing to recognise, or at least choosing not to recognise publicly, is that deprivation, housing crises, unsustainable immigration, and failing public services are happening in the south.
The Labour MP for Gillingham and Rainham in Kent Naushabah Khan called Andy Burnham out for this in the media just yesterday. Are the Manchesterism-induced cracks already revealing themselves on the Labour benches?
For all the Manchesteristic rhetoric about empowering ‘communities’, Andy Burnham’s vision is asking voters to place their faith in more politicians, increased tax and spending, along with increasingly complex layers of administration. That is not better Government; it is simply more Government.
The culture of Prime Ministerial regicide Britain has fallen into in recent years - masterfully exploited by this unfailingly ambitious Blair protege in a manner that would make Machiavelli blush - has left successive administrations completely incapable of leveraging the democratic tools at their disposal. The issue is not Westminster - our parliamentary system is fantastic and led us to global greatness and prosperity. The problem is that the said tools are being neglected and failed.
Andy Burnham knows this, and he should use his demonstrable talent to act on it, not create more Government of divisive quangocracy for an easy route to power.
