Burnham’s devolution plans are just so much hot air

I really want the north of England to win. I’ve spent much of my life – including a stint as mayor of Middlesbrough between 2019 and 2023 – in the communities Westminster has abandoned. Which brings us to Andy Burnham and his plans, vaguely outlined in today’s ‘big’ policy speech, to devolve power throughout the UK, and even establish a ‘No10 North’ in Manchester.

I like Andy. He’s intelligent, a natural communicator and, most of all, he just seems like a good lad. After today’s speech, he’ll tour the country selling a fairytale about the growth he’s created as mayor of Greater Manchester. His grand thesis, dubbed ‘Manchesterism’, is that if you hand power and bags of cash to metro mayors, the North will magically boom.

There’s just one problem. It is absolute, total nonsense. Andy’s getting drunk on his own PR. If he continues to drink it and rolls out these devolution plans, the working class will suffer. Just as they have in Greater Manchester.

Burnham’s Manchesterism is just the latest iteration of age-old yearnings and dreams. Talk of rebalancing the North-South gap has been around since the Special Areas (Development and Improvement) Act of 1934. Yet so far, nothing has worked. Ninety years of political speeches have left us with the exact same maps and the exact same disappointment.

Burnham will no doubt claim over the coming weeks that Greater Manchester’s economy has grown by over three per cent a year during his mayorship, beating the national average. He boasts about this one a lot, as though it’s the result of mayoral genius.

But at best, it’s grossly misleading. The Greater Manchester economy did grow more than some places. This wasn’t because of Burnham’s economic nous. It is because Greater Manchester’s population has exploded over the past few years. Indeed, in the period since Burnham took charge in 2017, Greater Manchester’s population increased by over 250,000

Much of this growth has been driven by intensive international migration and high birth rates among these migrant communities. In less than a decade, Burnham’s patch essentially bolted on a whole new city the size of Southampton. That’s where much of his magical ‘growth’ comes from. It is demographic stuffing.

Another core source of the population explosion is the general ballooning of student numbers. Many of the city’s shiny new skyscrapers are actually 20- to 35-storey student blocks, built to cope with the 120,000 students crammed into the city centre. This isn’t high-quality economic regeneration.

Of course, there has been some genuine economic progress in Greater Manchester. It’s happened over 20 to 30 years, and some of it has been on his watch. But Burnham, and the mid-2010s regional devolution programme that created the metro mayors, aren’t responsible for this economic growth. The boom started long before Burnham became mayor in 2017. It is part of a global phenomenon of urban renaissance and big-city living. It’s happening across the world.

In fact, other British cities are doing just as well as Manchester. Despite lacking a slick PR machine and a metro mayor. The Glasgow city region is outperforming Manchester on certain key metrics. The Bristol city region also shows up the myth of Manchesterism. Despite the West of England metro mayor holding a fraction of Burnham’s devolved power, the Bristol area holds its own against Manchester’s ‘miracle’.

So, two city regions, without the Burnham sparkle, equalling Manchester’s achievement. The theory that growth requires massive PR and heavy devolution doesn’t hold up.

And look at the underlying stories that the Burnham PR machine keeps quiet about. Child poverty in Greater Manchester has skyrocketed during his mayoralty, far above the national average. Local wages have stagnated, stuck below the national average, and unemployment has risen. Similarly, Greater Manchester’s colossal homelessness crisis hasn’t improved at all. Visitors are quickly horrified by the sheer scale of rough sleeping and begging that confronts them.

I am from Middlesbrough, and I want to see England’s northern towns and cities thrive. I want everywhere else to thrive, too. But Manchesterism is clearly not the answer for the working class of the north or anywhere else.

Burnham has hastily manufactured this devolution crusade to create a veneer of purpose. It’s a very shallow start for our de facto prime minister.

Andy Preston was mayor of Middlesbrough from 2019 until 2023.