The King of the North’s reputation as Manchester’s saviour is undeserved. He offers no solutions to any of Britain’s biggest problems
Daily Telegraph 20/05/26
There are great political leaders, men of integrity and principle, and then there is Andy Burnham, that most over-hyped of Labour apparatchiks.
There is no substance behind the fake bonhomie and easy charm, just more mediocrity, and yet his King of the North act appears to be taking in millions. One poll suggests he would propel Labour into the lead were he to become leader, a catastrophic development.
Yet his achievements as mayor of Greater Manchester range from the grossly exaggerated to the non-existent. He has presided over a series of disasters, including wasting £100m on a Ulez-style assault on motorists and his police force being placed in special measures.
His class-war-infused analysis of Britain’s problems is ahistoric and economically illiterate; his cod municipal socialism would kill off what is left of our prosperity.
Burnham’s skill is to be a human chameleon who has mastered vibes-based politics, reinventing himself to tap into the shifting zeitgeist, most recently as an insurgent, anti-establishment localist fusing nostalgia and modernity.
The chutzpah is off the charts. He is running as an anti-system candidate in the Makerfield by-election, a populist pledging to tear down the status quo, even though he was one of the architects of our failed social and economic settlement.
His persona as an outsider is concocted – he served in three Cabinet roles under Gordon Brown, including as health secretary and chief secretary to the Treasury during the financial crisis, and held shadow Cabinet jobs under not just Ed Miliband but, for over a year, under Jeremy Corbyn.
Burnham claims to be a man of the people, but is useless on immigration. He campaigned to remain in the EU and is desperate to rejoin at any cost. He has relentlessly undermined women’s rights, backing easier self-ID as part of the Gender Recognition Act and mocking the common sense view that female lavatories should be a safe space for women. He has failed on rape gangs, as Maggie Oliver, the Rochdale child sex abuse whistleblower, has explained in a scathing letter.
His flip-flopping is even more legendary than Sir Keir Starmer’s. He used to be a Blairite, and now promotes socialism, mass renationalisation of utilities, transport and housing. He supported strict fiscal rules, then didn’t, now does again. He dismissed mansion taxes during his leadership bid, but now endorses vindictive wealth and income tax rises.
Grotesquely, he blames Margaret Thatcher for our woes, despite being a beneficiary of the social mobility she unleashed and even though Britain has long since been dragged back to a pre-Iron Lady collectivist dystopia.
A 29-year cross-party drive to reverse her policies, including during Burnham’s own time in government, has led to taxes at an all-time high, out-of-control spending, a throttled City, a FTSE 100 bereft of UK startups, net zero crushing our last industries, the return of nationalisations and price controls, regulations that clobber enterprise and monetarism as distant history.
The latest madness – proposed price caps on supermarket groceries, the confiscation of property wealth, the exodus of billionaires – will surely only intensify under PM Burnham.
His ultimate deceit is to prescribe even heavier doses of the poison we have been ingesting for years, while pretending that his policies amount to a radical reset away from a long since defunct Thatcherism.
The Manchester mayor has pledged to reverse Margaret Thatcher’s legacy Credit: Peter Jordan/Popperfoto
It’s a shameless confidence trick by Britain’s most dangerous political entrepreneur, pulled off by leveraging his undeserved reputation as a competent municipal leader, the supposed author of a northern renaissance.
You would think, from Burnham’s propaganda, that Greater Manchester now genuinely rivals London, that it has become Britain’s own Houston or Miami, cities that steal firms and jobs from New York, LA or Silicon Valley.
This delusion is buttressed by questionable statistics. Manchester’s gross value added allegedly grew 3.42 per cent a year between 2013-2023, seemingly powered by a productivity miracle, outperforming London and making the case for Manchesterism, redefined as a public-private transport and regeneration partnership. Sadly for Burnham, the figures cannot be trusted.
Paul Swinney, economist at The Data City, has taken the numbers apart. Manchester did fine, but not spectacularly. A large chunk of the supposed boom in accounting and legal services simply doesn’t exist; hours worked have been undercounted (wrongly boosting productivity numbers), and the supposed strong growth in GDP per capita is contradicted by stagnant wages.
Manchester also continues to lag on other metrics. Disposable incomes rose by just 0.2 per cent a year during that period, far less than in London. Manchester ranks 19th out of 63 cities and towns in the ratio of private to public sector jobs, 22nd for new economy firms per capita, 19th for wages, 42nd for employment and 22nd for high qualifications, according to Cities Outlook 2026.
The jobs growth league table for 2013-2023 from the Centre for Cities ranks Manchester just 12th, beaten by Luton, Mansfield, Peterborough, Reading, Warrington, Bristol, Basildon, London and Glasgow. Jobs growth in Manchester was almost identical to Liverpool, an interesting contrast given proximity, history and the absence of either Burnham or the transfer of BBC jobs to Salford.
There is no doubt that Manchester, in common with many other cities, has regenerated swathes of its derelict post-industrial wasteland. There has been strong growth in knowledge-intensive business services jobs in the city centre, aided by better public transport.
But what relative success Manchesterism has enjoyed has little to do with Burnham, the right man in the right place at the right time.
The improvements began with the Tories, and were led by Richard Leese, former Labour leader of the city council, and Howard Bernstein, former Manchester CEO. The Trafford Centre (under the Tories), the rollout of Metrolink (ditto), cash from central government to rebuild after an IRA terror attack (under Michael Heseltine), and the rise (and huge investment in) football all played a role. Starting with the first completion in 2006, Manchester rolled out the tall-building, residential-led regeneration strategy so beloved of many other cities globally.
Yet none of this has led to a genuine breakthrough, to multi-billion-pound startups or to large firms relocating their global HQs. Manchester isn’t Austin, Texas. Building new flats and making it easier for people to take buses (Burnham’s claim to fame) has its uses, but is insufficient to create a sustainable economic boom. Canary Wharf in London was a real regeneration; Manchester is more superficial.
Burnham has no solutions to any of Britain’s pathologies. He would cripple the economy with another Left-wing pivot. He is the frontrunner in Makerfield. His real record must be exposed before it is too late.
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