Andy Burnham’s blueprint for Britain: devolution and public ownership

Andy Burnham is positioning himself as the most credible left-of-centre alternative to the current direction of British politics, and his economic blueprint is becoming harder for Westminster to ignore. The Greater Manchester mayor, who has spent nearly a decade building what he calls a ‘London-proof’ model of governance, unveiled a sweeping vision last week that combines radical devolution with a renewed case for public ownership of key services.

What Burnham actually wants

At the heart of his plan is a push to shift real fiscal power away from Whitehall. Burnham wants combined authorities like Greater Manchester to control far more of the tax revenue generated locally — something closer to the model used in Germany, where regional governments retain a substantial share of income tax receipts. Right now, English local leaders control just 7p of every pound raised in their areas. Burnham wants that figure to change dramatically.

He’s also calling for a national jobs guarantee, investment-led growth in green industries, and what he describes as a ‘take back control’ approach to public transport — specifically, the renationalisation of bus services across England, not just in the North.

The political calculation

But this isn’t just policy. It’s positioning. Burnham has never quite left the national conversation since losing the Labour leadership race to Jeremy Corbyn in 2015, and the question of whether he’ll run again — potentially against a struggling Keir Starmer government — hangs over everything he does.

His blueprint is carefully calibrated to appeal both to traditional Labour voters in post-industrial towns and to younger urbanites frustrated by the pace of change on housing and the climate. It’s a wide lane to drive through, and Burnham knows it.

A senior policy analyst familiar with Greater Manchester’s devolution model said: ‘What Burnham has done locally is prove that integrated public services can work. The argument is that it just needs the funding and the powers to scale up nationally.’

How Greater Manchester became the test case

Since gaining greater powers in 2017, Greater Manchester has integrated health and social care in ways that other regions haven’t managed. The combined authority oversees a budget of around £3.9 billion. Homelessness has been tackled through the ‘A Bed Every Night’ programme, which has housed more than 5,000 people since 2018. These are the numbers Burnham’s team leads with when making the case that his model travels.

Still, critics point out that Greater Manchester has also faced significant delays on key infrastructure projects and that some of its headline homelessness figures obscure a more complicated picture on the ground.

What comes next

Burnham is expected to formalise more of his national proposals ahead of any future Labour leadership contest, with a policy document reportedly in preparation for later this year. Whether the current government will adopt any of his ideas — or be forced to by political pressure — remains the real question. For now, he’s building the argument piece by piece, and Westminster is listening whether it wants to or not.