Andy Burnham arrives in London like a victorious warlord marching south. How will he treat the capital? Will he plunder its coffers, poison its wells and send chests of treasure north? Or will he pause to think about where the treasure came from and consider how it can be grown?
It’s easy to get carried away with the “King of the North” schtick. But even without it, Londoners may worry about the Prime Minister Presumptive (is that the right constitutional title?) and his views on their city.
Burnham has railed against the “London set” who run the Labour Party (that sinister cabal comprising Keir Starmer and…err…Jeremy Corbyn). He has complained of unbalanced transport funding. Some argue that shifting economic growth away from London is a keystone of his programme.
This may all be politically convenient, particularly when seeing off a challenge from Reform UK in a Manchester suburb, but is it politically or economically sustainable as a programme for government?
Politically, such an approach might have made sense a year or two ago. London could be safely taken for granted electorally as the last Labour “Red Wall” standing, electing Labour MPs in 59 out of its 75 constituencies in 2024. However, following May’s local elections, in which Labour lost 40 per cent of the council seats that they won in 2022 and saw a 17 per cent swing against the party, that wall looks a lot less robust and lot less red. As Business London’s Muniya Barua said last week, “London is now back in play.”
The economics are questionable too. London generates 22 per cent of the UK’s economic output and raises a similar proportion of tax revenues with only 13 per cent of the country’s population. But, while the capital’s productivity (economic output per hour worked) remains nearly 30 per cent higher than the UK’s, it has been slower-growing than average since 2008, and particularly slow growing in London’s traditional economic core (City of London, Westminster and the north of Tower Hamlets), as well as across most of outer London (with the notable exception of Croydon).
This is an issue for the whole of the UK: London tax revenues support public services and public investment across the country, including the transport investment urgently needed in northern England. If London declines economically, the beneficiaries are as likely to be in Singapore as they are in Salford.
Andy Burnham probably knows all this. He will certainly be aware that Manchester is the only major conurbation that has outstripped London’s productivity growth since 2008. There has been much talk of what the secret sauce of “Manchesterism” might be and how its lessons could be applied more widely.
There are the much-vaunted public transport reforms (which Wes Streeting acidly described, in an interview last month, as the “TfL model”). There has also been a focus on attracting new investment, new development and new businesses to the city centre, a process which has been at the heart of Manchester’s revival and boosted by its charismatic Mayor.
Burnham has successfully ridden and amplified the wave of Manchester’s revival (as Ken Livingstone did when he became Mayor of London in 2000). The process began under Manchester City Council’s leader Richard Leese and its chief executive Howard Bernstein 30 or more years ago. Bernstein, who died in 2024, was tireless in deal-making and partnership-building, driven by a sense of place and the ability to work with government to get Manchester what it needed for growth. As the city centre grew, so other boroughs in Greater Manchester began to see the benefits.
There are lessons here for Burnham and for London. Manchester developed a strong vision and lobbied relentlessly for the powers and resources to turn that vision, at least partly, into reality. London’s civic leaders should be ready to make their case – the case for infrastructure investment, the case for control of tax revenues, the case for the resources to address the capital’s persistent problems of poverty, inequality and homelessness. As the politician who has benefitted most from devolution and who put it centre stage in his campaign, Andy Burnham should be receptive to their argument.
But London should also look to its own government structures, and consider whether these work as well as they could in enabling “good growth” in the capital. As Andy Burnham will know, other English city regions have an urban core that is more or less within one local authority; Greater Manchester certainly does. By contrast, London’s Central Activities Zone, which contains London’s and the UK’s economic, civic and cultural core, is spread between ten local authority areas, including the City of London.
While there are great examples of collaboration between these bodies, there are also plenty of areas – from planning and licensing policy, to street cleaning, to regulation of car clubs and bike hire – where central London would benefit from a more unified approach, as discussed in Friday’s OnLondon Extra newsletter.
This could mean new structures, local government re-organisation, or simply more rigorous partnerships and shared service arrangements. In making their case for the powers and resources they need, London’s civic leaders should also show how they will work together to use these to support economic growth in the capital and across the country.
Richard Brown 