London: Labour MP Andy Burnham has promised a “10-year mission” to raise living standards if he becomes Britain’s prime minister within weeks, declaring he wants to rebuild industry and revive the regions by giving more power to mayors across the country.
Burnham declared that the political system was “broken” after years of falling household wealth and political turmoil, vowing to be a “circuit-breaker” who could turn the country around.
But his promises, set out in a major speech delivered a week after Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he would step down, drew swift criticism for lacking detail on how they would operate and how they would lift economic growth.
Burnham, who has spent the past nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester, set out broad themes in the speech but said specific decisions, and the appointment of cabinet ministers, would wait until after the leadership was resolved.
“We will create a more streamlined state with a clearer purpose to power up all parts of the country and put a laser-like focus on growth and regeneration – good growth,” he said.
This would mean reforming essential utilities to restore public ownership, he said, as well as government measures to “reindustrialise” the economy after years of losing manufacturing jobs.
“We need to safeguard sovereign manufacturing and production capability across the country in critical sectors like steel, defence, energy, food and farming,” he said.
“Rather than just being prepared to let it go, as we have sadly done in the past.”
Burnham warned about the need to increase the number of apprentices and said the education system had to be overhauled so that trades were considered as worthy as university degrees.
In an important acknowledgement of the policy challenge of moving young people off welfare and into work, he hinted at reforms to social security payments without any firm commitment.
“People have argued over many years for an education system based on parity between academic and technical, and that is what we will build, giving every young person growing up here a clear path into a re-industrialised Britain,” he said.
“Where young people need mental health support, it should be provided as part of in-work support.”
The idea of giving more power to local government is not new, given similar language from then-prime minister Boris Johnson in a plan known as “levelling up” in 2021, when he said local authorities would have more scope to make decisions.
Burnham, however, captured attention with a related pledge to shift some of the powers of the prime minister’s office in Number 10 Downing Street in London – near the major public service departments around Whitehall – so that a new unit of government would be responsible for northern England and other areas outside the capital.
“We will bring about the biggest rebalancing of power, our country has seen it is time for Whitehall to accept that growth cannot be ordered from the top down,” he said.
“Instead, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up. It comes from having the power at ground level to make a real difference.”
Burnham called his proposed new office “Number 10 of the North” and the phrase dominated media coverage of his speech, although he did not outline any details on how it would work.
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David Crowe is Europe correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.
