{"id":813,"date":"2026-06-24T10:43:25","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=813"},"modified":"2026-06-24T10:43:25","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T10:43:25","slug":"andy-burnham-has-three-years-to-fix-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=813","title":{"rendered":"Andy Burnham Has Three Years to Fix Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Andy Burnham will soon have a monumental task. If, as expected, he replaces Keir Starmer as Britain\u2019s prime minister, he will not just be taking up an office that has chewed through six occupants in merely 10 years. He will also probably be the British establishment\u2019s last chance to stave off a government controlled by Nigel Farage, the Brexit architect whose nationalist party, Reform UK, is currently leading in the polls. Under British law, the ruling Labour Party can keep its current parliamentary majority without calling an election until 2029. That gives Burnham roughly three years to revive the moribund British economy before frustrated voters turn away from mainstream parties and opt for the radicals instead.<\/p>\n

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Before Burnham rode to Labour\u2019s rescue late last week by winning a special election for Parliament, he was mayor of Greater Manchester, a place that has grown in defiance of Britain\u2019s economic malaise. Relative to his unpopular Labour colleagues in London, Burnham can credibly argue that he knows better how to conjure up prosperity. \u201cYou can\u2019t order growth from the top down,\u201d he told me a few months ago in Manchester. \u201cThe U.K., for most of our lives, has been an overly centralized country.\u201d<\/p>\n

When we spoke, I was reporting on why Britain had economically stagnated since the global financial crisis almost 20 years ago, and I had come to Manchester because its growth had consistently been double the national average. From 2017 to 2023, cumulative productivity in Greater Manchester increased by 12.6 percent\u2014whereas inner London saw no productivity increase whatsoever. The hope implicit in Burnham\u2019s seemingly sudden rise is that his city\u2019s experience can now be scaled across Britain.<\/p>\n

Burnham\u2019s odyssey has actually been longer than Ulysses\u2019s. He had been a well-liked and prominent Labour member of Parliament from 2001 to 2017. But after running twice to be Labour leader in 2010 and 2015, and losing badly both times, Burnham left Westminster in 2017 to lead the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. The authority was an experiment in devolution\u2014allowing greater local control over taxation, transportation, and housing. One of Burnham\u2019s biggest concrete accomplishments has been quotidian: bringing Manchester\u2019s buses together into a coordinated network supervised by municipal government.<\/p>\n

This may seem small-bore to Americans or Germans who live in a federalized country, where states have substantial control over their own budgets and can act as laboratories of democracy. But it is revolutionary stuff in England, where power and spending are extremely centralized in the national government. Devolution\u2014which Burnham insisted had ushered in \u201ca level of growth that we\u2019ve not seen here, probably since Victorian times\u201d\u2014is the clearest element of an economic ideology that he has taken to calling \u201cManchesterism.\u201d He sometimes speaks of this grandly, as \u201cthe end of neoliberalism\u201d and \u201cbusiness-friendly socialism\u201d (no oxymoron intended).<\/p>\n

The best argument in Burnham\u2019s favor is that he understands that regional inequality\u2014driven by bad transportation networks, too little building, and skills deficits\u2014is a primary cause of Britain\u2019s underwhelming economic growth, and that he seems to know how to reverse it. Burnham\u2019s critics charge that he takes too much credit for Manchester\u2019s rise, which is also due to high costs in London that encourage businesses to expand elsewhere. The BBC and British government agencies also decided years ago to relocate offices to the city, which spurred development. The area also has the good fortune of hosting two of the country\u2019s best-known Premier League teams. Those who wondered whether Manchesterism was a workable system, or merely a good coinage, will have their chance to see.<\/p>\n

Before he became prime minister, Starmer talked obsessively about the need for \u201cgrowth, growth, growth\u201d without revealing his plan to accomplish it. Then it became clear that there was no plan. The transformative potential of a massive majority was quickly eaten up by a series of ill-conceived policy announcements\u2014such as restricting winter-fuel allowances for the elderly and cutting welfare\u2014that were embarrassingly withdrawn in response to entirely predictable criticism. Commentators summarized Labour\u2019s political strategy as \u201call pain and no gain.\u201d If Burnham is able to design a comprehensive economic plan, he will have an overwhelming parliamentary majority at his back for at least the next three years. The lesson from Starmer\u2019s short tenure is that Burnham must move aggressively, because political capital decays quickly. (The lesson from Liz Truss\u2019s short tenure as prime minister\u2014which ended after mere weeks because of an overly radical budget plan\u2014is to not move so quickly that you trigger a market crash.)<\/p>\n

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Although Burnham\u2019s path to power has been cleared\u2014he may run unopposed for Labour leader\u2014he has no incentive to make revolutionary proposals until his ascension is complete. For now, he has pledged to color within the lines set by Starmer\u2019s team: the strict fiscal rules laid out by Rachel Reeves, the chancellor of the exchequer, and the strict immigration policies of Shabana Mahmood, the home secretary. He has walked back remarks that Britain had to get out of being \u201cin hock to the bond market\u201d (which the bond market did not appreciate); he has also recanted his past interest in a referendum over rejoining the European Union.<\/p>\n

After spending 14 years in the minority, from 2010 until 2024, and then floundering for another two years under Starmer, Labour is desperate to show that it can really govern Britain. The first plans that Burnham unveils will probably be swiftly passed into law.<\/p>\n

Farage will be waiting to capitalize on any missteps. If a general election were held today, Reform would win a strong plurality of seats. If an election occurs in a few years\u2019 time, after the implosion of another Labour government, the populist party may fare even better.<\/p>\n

Burnham has a genial, dorky-dad affect, but when I asked him about Reform, something pugnacious came over him. \u201cGreater Manchester has become more and more functional as the country has become dysfunctional. But why has the country become more dysfunctional? I will put that directly at Reform\u2019s door\u2014the promises they made running up to the Brexit referendum and since just haven\u2019t been borne out whatsoever,\u201d he said. Brexit was not just bad for growth, Burnham maintained; it also sowed the seeds of the current migration crisis by cutting off access to the EU. Because Britain still needed workers from abroad, the Brexit supporter Boris Johnson liberalized migration laws from elsewhere, attracting an extraordinary surge, which has destabilized British politics to Reform\u2019s great benefit. \u201cI think people can see that that form of politics\u2014a more divisive, polarized politics\u2014does not bring growth at the end of the day. It creates division, it creates argument, it creates discord. Greater Manchester has been built on completely the opposite,\u201d Burnham said.<\/p>\n

Is Manchesterism enough to save the Labour Party, change Britain\u2019s economic trajectory, and fend off its rising nationalists? Burnham insisted to me that his party can take the insurgents on and win. \u201cLabour politics has helped build this place into the growth story it is today,\u201d he said of Manchester, \u201cand I\u2019m quite ready to take on anybody who\u2019s going to try and drip poison in and break it apart,\u201d he told me.<\/p>\n

Reform\u2019s argument is that the Labour and the Conservatives make up a \u201cuniparty\u201d and have proved themselves unable and unfit to govern, and that only an insurgent and iconoclastic party can sweep away the rules, regulations, and entrenched interests that inhibit growth. Starmer was a vindication for that thesis; a failure by Burnham might be the final proof Reform needs.<\/p>\n

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Can a former mayor show that the establishment can still govern?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":812,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ideas"],"yoast_head":"\nAndy Burnham Has Three Years to Fix Britain - Commercial Relocation Pros<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=813\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Andy Burnham Has Three Years to Fix Britain - Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Can a former mayor show that the establishment can still govern?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/commercialrelocationpros.com\/?p=813\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Commercial Relocation Pros\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-06-24T10:43:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=813#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=813\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3a3374a445f1b5d4852b1d7c15b9fe3a\"},\"headline\":\"Andy Burnham Has Three Years to Fix Britain\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-06-24T10:43:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=813\"},\"wordCount\":1305,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=813#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/06\\\/f18147b6ad30180f38e31246a86bda9d.avif\",\"articleSection\":[\"Ideas\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=813#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=813\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/commercialrelocationpros.com\\\/?p=813\",\"name\":\"Andy Burnham Has Three Years to Fix Britain - 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