West Yorkshire mayor Tracy Brabin insists mass transit ‘will be a tram’ (Credit: Milo Chandler / Alamy)

10 min read11 min

It looked as if the stars were finally in alignment. Leeds had been waiting decades for a tram network of the kind enjoyed in Sheffield, Manchester and Nottingham, and in July 2024 it looked as if one was closer than ever before.

West Yorkshire’s Labour mayor, Tracy Brabin, had just won re-election promising to start work on the scheme and her party had now taken office nationally on a mission to “forge ahead” with new infrastructure.

To top it off, Leeds now even had local MP Rachel Reeves in post as Chancellor. With £2.1bn committed to it in June 2025, the project’s future looked bright.

But just days before Christmas, an announcement was made. Brabin confirmed that following “an independent review” held in September 2025, the scheme was now being progressed at a slower pace. Instead of services starting in the mid-2030s, they will instead begin in the late 2030s.

The reason for this was that while Brabin’s West Yorkshire Combined Authority (WYCA) had previously been progressing the business case and the route planning simultaneously, they had now agreed to take a “sequential” approach by submitting the business case first.

The announcement did not make clear why the review was held, other than it being “part of the usual process for projects of this size and scale”.

And while calling the review “independent” might suggest its authors have nothing to do with those funding the scheme, it quickly emerged that the report was in fact written by the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (Nista), a joint unit of the Treasury and Cabinet Office.

Speculation mounted that the project was in trouble. Leeds has been disappointed not just by a litany of failed plans for trams and trolleybuses over the last 40 years but also by Boris Johnson’s 2021 decision to the axe the city’s High Speed 2 route.

Admitting that people in West Yorkshire have become “cynical” about such promises, Brabin insisted the new timeline would “offer certainty for the scheme”, as ministers had “committed to working with us to cut red tape and put tracks on the ground as quickly as possible”.

Tom Forth, a Leeds-based expert in transport data who has been a vocal advocate for the tram, was not convinced: “We have had about eight delays before to this type of thing in Leeds. All of the previous delays have resulted in cancellation… Maybe we’ll get a hovercraft to Mars and we’ll call it ‘West Yorkshire Tram’, I don’t know, but it’s not good.”

A Leeds Labour activist meanwhile tells The House: “Leeds residents think it’s cancelled. It doesn’t matter who I speak to. If it’s not somebody hyper-involved in local government policy or transport policy, [they think] it’s not happening.”

Both WYCA and the government have refused Freedom of Information requests for the Nista review, with the former citing an exemption to protect “the free and frank exchange of views” between officials.

The House, however, has obtained a copy and can for the first time reveal its contents. The 45-page document sets out 19 separate risks relating to the project’s governance, assurance and planning, but one key recurring theme is the extent to which WYCA is said to have allowed the scheme to be shaped “around a political agenda rather than a recognised programmatic approach”.

The review specifically refers to Brabin’s 2024 manifesto pledge to get “spades in the ground by 2028”, which is the year that she intends to stand for a third term in office.

One source who has been following the project closely says: “They were rushing so much to try and get something approved, to meet the political timescale of doing something in this mayor’s mandate by 2028. The whole point of the HS2 learning is you’re not supposed to do that, because that’s what leads you to make bad decisions.”

The review says of Brabin’s 2028 pledge: “This date has been driving the planning for WYMT [West Yorkshire Mass Transit] and while it is vitally important to drive pace into delivery and also challenge current ways of thinking, there are elements of Managing Public Money, that government needs to adhere to.

“This has generated a tension for WYMT between planning a major project in line with current Green Book Business Case Approval and seeking to achieve a manifesto pledge.

“Lessons from other major projects have identified that options appraisal for investment, robust project planning and risk management are critical ingredients for successful delivery and should not be compromised for unrealistic milestones.”

It cautions that there is a risk of “political embarrassment if there was a large disconnect between a lauded ‘spades in the ground’ date and the start of actual work” and warns that money could be wasted, saying: “The risk of nugatory spend is high.”

The likely cost of a Bus Rapid Transit mode is significantly less than for trams

In addition to concerns about staff capacity in both WYCA and the Department for Transport (DfT), the review also highlights the need for WYCA to take a “mode-agnostic” view of the project. In plain English, the government has not actually said it will fund a tram system in West Yorkshire. It has said it will fund a “mass transit” system, which might consist of trams, but might not.

The review found there was a “clear mantra” among those working on the scheme that “the term WYMT is synonymous with ‘tram’” and that “anything less than” a tram would be considered “second-class”.

Nista said that while “it may be the case that trams are the right modal choice”, the review team were “concerned that the lack of unbiased thinking about the best solution for delivering the objectives has hampered the development of an evidence-based demonstration of the most effective and efficient scheme”.

It adds: “There is a need to build the case for trams which has not been completed. This is particularly important because the likely cost of a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) mode is significantly less than for trams and the BRT benefits:cost ratio is significantly better.”

Staff working on the project told Nista that trams “will be transformational, more resilient and more acceptable to the public” than a bus network, but Nista asserted that “the evidence for this has not yet been developed”.

Martin Hamilton, CEO of the Leeds Civic Trust, tells The House that trams would attract a higher ridership than buses, as “people who wouldn’t think about getting a bus do consider getting a tram”. He adds that as well as offering increased speed, trams would also bring wider economic benefits.

“If you look at some of the examples within the UK, but also internationally, you can see how it’s possible to use a tram route as a way of bringing brownfield sites into play in terms of housebuilding and in terms of industry along the route. It can really act as a catalyst for regeneration in a way that simply running a bus down a road just won’t do.”

WYCA has consulted on several different possible alignments for the scheme’s initial two routes.

The first would run from central to south Leeds, and could potentially call at Elland Road, the home of Leeds United. The club is expanding its stadium in a £650m redevelopment project, with LUFC director Peter Lowy suggesting mass transit could make a big difference for fans on match days.

The other route would link Leeds with Bradford, despite the fact that the two cities are already connected by train.

The House understands that, at the time of the review, WYCA’s preferred alignment for this second route involved running the tram on main roads between the two cities, because that would enable planning consent to be granted most quickly. But this would have caused significant disruption to traffic during construction, and would also not have enabled much new housing development compared with options which took the tram off-road.

A source familiar with the scheme said that by taking this approach, the mayor had been putting “political expediency in front of what’s probably in the best interests of taxpayers, bluntly”.

In a February letter, rail minister Lord Hendy told Brabin: “It is important to carefully consider the cost, effects and benefits/disbenefits of ‘street running’ vs utilising reserved track where available or running through brownfield land.”

The Nista review similarly warns that “there are risks in committing to a specific route and mode before full approval and which may not be supported by all senior stakeholders”, in addition to “the risk of nugatory spend, litigation and public embarrassment for WYCA if works are started out of sequence and there is a subsequent need for reversal”.

A WYCA source told The House no decisions had yet been made on routes.

Since the review, Brabin has refused to resile from her manifesto pledge, insisting that spades will still go in the ground in 2028, though she now specifies these will enable “preparatory works”.

WYCA’s website explains: “This will not involve laying tracks, but it will prevent issues in any new developments or on our road network that could cause problems for the project, helping to advance future delivery.”

The mayor has also doubled down on her claim that mass transit will mean a tram network, despite the review’s findings on that question. “It’s going to be a tram,” she told WYCA’s scrutiny committee in March this year, adding that the Chancellor has made clear her support for trams.

But the scheme’s business case is being submitted to the DfT, not the Treasury. Asked just a few weeks ago whether she could rule out a bus-only scheme in Leeds, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said that while Brabin was making the case for trams “very powerfully”, it is the DfT’s job to ensure public funds are “spent wisely”.

Brabin told the committee: “We are now in a process where we have to prove it can’t be a bus – and that’s fine, we’ll do that, because it will be a tram. My approach is, the case has been proven that light rail is a solution to connectivity in Manchester, in Nottingham, in Birmingham, in Edinburgh, in all of the cities across Europe [that have trams].”

A WYCA spokesperson told The House: “We have bold ambitions for West Yorkshire and that includes addressing long-standing connectivity issues that are holding our region back.

“Beginning preparatory construction works by 2028 has been an ambition for the combined authority for some time because the people of West Yorkshire have waited long enough for this investment. Delivery of major infrastructure projects in the UK is too slow, and in the spirit of devolution we want to innovate to deliver mass transit more quickly.

“Nista’s predecessor body, the National Infrastructure Commission, set out clearly in 2023 that Leeds needs a tram. A review at this stage of a project of this scale is completely normal, and the majority of its recommendations have already been addressed by the combined authority.”

The DfT said: “While we do not comment on details of leaked reports, the government fully supports mayor Brabin’s ambitions for a world-class mass transit system for West Yorkshire. We look forward to receiving WYCA’s initial business case for the project later this year.” 

Andy Burnham and Manchesterism (Illustration by Tracy Worrall)

7 min read46 min

The first hint of Manchesterism in the public consciousness came at an outdoor press conference in October 2020, when Andy Burnham heard about the latest Covid restrictions to be imposed on the city and the money available for it. In a moment that launched a thousand memes, the mayor looked down at his adviser’s phone bearing the news and grimaced. “I mean, it’s brutal, isn’t it?” he said. “This is not right. They should not be doing this – grinding people down: £22m to fight the situation we are in is frankly disgraceful.”

Boris Johnson was the prime minister then, but the refrain has persisted: ‘Manchester is being done down by Westminster and Whitehall, deprived of the autonomy it needs to thrive and I, the city’s elected mayor, will not roll over and keep quiet about it.’ As Burnham has grown more confident – poised, were he able to do so, to challenge Keir Starmer – Manchesterism has become a way for him to express how he would run the country differently.

What, then, is Manchesterism? What relevance does an idea rooted in one city have for governing a nation of 70 million? Does it owe anything to Manchester Liberalism, the other big political idea to have emerged from the North West? And given how little power British mayors have, how much has Burnham been able to do to flesh out his philosophy?

Doubters say it is mostly vibes and boosterism, rooted in a belief in Manchester’s thwarted potential (axing HS2 to Manchester fuelled that disaffection) and relies on a bottom-up localism that would be hard to translate to the national stage. Enthusiasts believe it would permanently reshape the relationship between Britons and their elected representatives. Rachel Reeves’ tentative plans to share income tax revenues with local government, mentioned in her recent Mais Lecture, hint that Burnham’s message is getting through.

Yet Manchesterism is a “governance rather than an economics question”, says Marc Stears, director of the Policy Lab at UCL, and a former adviser to Ed Miliband. He describes it as “an essentially collaborative way of working” where government allies with trade unions and business to “dismantle roadblocks”. He says this approach is impossible when the country is governed overwhelmingly from Westminster: “The short-termism and antiquated nature of our governing stops you having a growth plan which is going to be successful.”

Stears, who has spent time in Australia, admires the “healthy rivalry” between cities like Sydney, Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide, compared with the relatively unproductive British cities beyond the capital. “If we’re reliant only on London and the South East, we won’t be able to get growth above 1.5 per cent.”

In practice, working more closely with unions and business has meant trying to bring services back into public control. Burnham’s signature reform has been to bring Manchester’s buses back into local authority control, calling them the Bee Network. He has also been planning more social housing to replace the stock lost to sell-offs. “It’s been difficult,” says Ryan Swift of the think tank IPPR North. “There’s been a mix of local government taking the lead on that and financially empowering social housing companies.” Efforts to reform skills and education have been less successful, largely because of the limited powers a city mayor has and difficulties in bringing opportunities and transport to some of Greater Manchester’s outlying boroughs, like Wigan.

Burnham has fleshed out Manchesterism by calling for constitutional changes like abolishing the House of Lords and replacing it with a senate of the nations and regions. Gordon Brown championed this plan, but very few of his proposed reforms survived contact with the Starmer government. Burnham also wants to reform the whipping system so that MPs can vote in the interests of their constituencies, and he has “come round” to proportional representation.

Critics ask how much of what makes Manchester relatively prosperous today is down to Burnham himself

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Last autumn he called for higher taxes on the better-off, the renationalisation of utilities and more government borrowing, telling the New Statesman: “We’ve got to get beyond this thing of being in hock to the bond market.” It was a bold move for a “governance” rather an economic project and raised questions about the cost of Burnham’s aspirations. With borrowing unlikely to get cheaper until the war in the Middle East is resolved, Manchesterism looks even more expensive. The market’s lack of confidence frustrates him. “The focus on the longer-term returns on delivery is something that’s held back investment in the North in recent years,” says Swift.

Critics ask how much of what makes Manchester relatively prosperous today is down to Burnham himself. The Labour-controlled council took several key decisions in the decade before he became mayor. It welcomed foreign investment in property, especially from the Abu Dhabi United Group investment fund, a lot of it unaffordable to most Mancunians. By 2011, the BBC was already moving into Salford and the Beetham Tower, for a while the tallest UK building outside London, had gone up. Burnham’s focus on the ‘social economy’ is in part a reaction to the feeling that central Manchester has prospered from a huge injection of oil money, not necessarily to the benefit of locals. “Kids can’t see a path to those skyscrapers,” he told the Social Mobility Commission.

Abu Dhabi still owns Man City, but Burnham has attracted foreign direct investment from the US, EU and India. The UK Biobank and a GCHQ base have moved in. Universities are heavily involved in the planned ‘Atom Valley’ in Rochdale. They represent the scientific, trade and manufacturing side of Manchesterism – an echo of the Manchester Liberalism of the mid-19th century and the emancipation of workers through international trade. Burnham is notably enthusiastic about reindustrialisation. Asked whether he identifies more with Richard Cobden or Friedrich Engels, he chooses Cobden, the Mancunian Radical and free-trader.

The Greens’ by-election victory in Gorton and Denton shows that Labour’s record in Manchester has not been enough to counter Keir Starmer’s unpopularity. Burnham will take comfort from the fact he was barred from standing, and that the Greens won through a very Labour appeal to working-class solidarity and the pain of the cost of living. Should he become PM and need to govern in coalition after the next election, Burnham is ideologically flexible enough to do it: for his part, Zack Polanski has said he could work with him.

But ‘Manchester’ localism carries risks. Regional and fiscal devolution means taking power away from Westminster – perhaps even a devolved England of German-style Länder. What if, as in Scotland, some regions choose to entrust it to parties that are not Labour? The prospect of, say, the East Midlands being run by Reform makes many on the left shudder. “There would have to be a change in the way people feel about politics,” says Swift, “and an acceptance of different politics in different areas. The argument still needs to be made for why devolution is a good thing in the longer term.”

Manchesterism is partly a howl of civic pride, an echo of The Fall’s “big, big, big, wide streets; those useless MPs”. “The wiring of the country isn’t right,” says Burnham, who couldn’t get a job in journalism in Manchester when he graduated. But it is also a model for radical devolution and a renationalisation and reindustrialisation project. Where it breaks from some of the early 21st century left is its lack of interest in expanding individual rights. 

Social mobility is vital to Burnham, but industry, education and infrastructure drive it forward, not rights-based law. Tellingly, the foreign cities to which he compares Manchester are outside Europe: Austin, Texas and Osaka in Japan.

To its fans, Manchesterism’s possibilities lie in the aspiration for an England that is not defined by the capital’s appetites, where “people feel settled and at ease with themselves”, as Stears puts it. It remains a work in progress – and that might suit Andy Burnham very well. 

4 min read48 min

Labour came into office with big ambitions for public service reform. Health, education and public order were three of the Keir Starmer government’s five initial missions, and while we don’t hear the M-word as often as we used to, ministers are still keen to improve the performance of public services across the country.

Public service reform is never easy – making a decision in Westminster does not magically lead to change in how people experience the service in their day-to-day lives. Ministers can feel removed from the services they oversee. But as the leaders of the system, there are some things that only ministers can do. Our recent Institute for Government (IfG) paper looked at lessons from successful reforms by recent governments that will be of use for any ministers today trying to improve how public services work.

Have a clear – and clearly thought-out – goal for your time in office

The most effective ministers have a clear idea of what they want to achieve in office. This will help them to articulate their vision to their civil servants and ensure that the department is pulling in the same direction to implement their objectives.

Nick Gibb, as minister for schools for much of the 2010-24 period, was relentlessly focused on his vision for reform. Having shadowed his post for five years, he entered office with an excellent knowledge of his brief and a clear idea that he wanted to improve the standards of teaching in schools. He is perhaps best known for pushing the synthetic phonics method for teaching children how to read, and introducing the phonics screening test to check how well schools were using this method. Not all ministers will have the same opportunity to shadow their posts, but it is crucial that they set out their priorities early and communicate them effectively to guide action throughout the system.

Build the team to achieve that goal

Once ministers know what they want to do, they need relationships inside and outside government – the strength of these relationships can determine whether reform is successful or not.

The success of the previous Labour government’s Sure Start programme – the inspiration behind the current government’s Best Start programme – relied on a cross-government coalition of support. Sure Start was overseen by a ministerial steering group that brought together several departments, including ministers responsible for health, education and social security. The idea was based on work by a senior Treasury official, and support from Gordon Brown as chancellor was crucial to its success. 

During the coalition, Norman Lamb was particularly skilled at building networks outside government as minister for care and support. He saw himself as a campaigner and an advocate for mental health in government, which lent him credibility and authenticity with the sector. Open engagement across government and the wider sector is therefore essential for ministers to secure buy-in for their agenda.

Choose the right tools to achieve the goal

To deliver tangible change in real-world outcomes, ministers need to use the right tools to embed their reforms. One way to help keep momentum on delivery and monitor progress effectively is by using accountability mechanisms.

As home secretary tasked with completing the rollout of the Neighbourhood Policing Programme, Jacqui Smith stripped back an array of inherited top-down targets for the police and focused instead on retaining one target, which measured public confidence in policing. Policing is operationally independent from the government, but Smith was able to negotiate targets collaboratively with police chiefs and use them to hold local police forces to account from the centre.

By using the right tools, ministers can maintain strategic oversight of reform without trying to solve every problem themselves. These are useful lessons for Home Office ministers, who have recently announced a set of targets for policing in England and Wales and a Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee to restore confidence in policing.

Public service reform is an ongoing slog for ministers and their teams. They will inevitably face criticism from inside and outside government, so they need to be prepared to dig in and defend their objectives. Having a clear goal, communicated to the right team and delivered with the right tools, will make this task much easier.  

Megan Bryer is a research assistant at the Institute for Government, and Tim Durrant is programme director of the IfG’s Ministers team.

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