UNCOMMON THOUGHT #003 – Mick Armstrong

And what happens when Manchester meets Mar-a-Lago

Writing about Tony Wilson got me thinking about Manchester.

Which is dangerous.

Because one minute I’m writing about Factory Records, the Haçienda and why sometimes you’ve got to ignore sensible people, and twenty minutes later I’m wondering whether Andy Burnham can change the way Britain is run.

Welcome to Uncommon Thoughts.

There is absolutely no content calendar.

Apparently we just see where we end up.

And this time we’ve ended up in Downing Street.

Because something rather significant has happened.

Andy Burnham is Prime Minister.

The bloke who spent years arguing that Westminster didn’t understand places like Greater Manchester is now sitting at the top of Westminster.

That’s either a fantastic opportunity.

Or the beginning of a particularly British joke.

The King of the North has moved south

I’ve always found the nickname King of the North slightly ridiculous.

Manchester isn’t the North.

Neither is Lancashire.

Liverpool certainly isn’t going to start taking instructions from Manchester because Andy Burnham has got a nice coat.

Newcastle has its own identity.

Yorkshire will probably declare independence before accepting Manchester as its capital.

And that’s before we even get to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

So this isn’t an article arguing that Britain needs to become Greater Greater Manchester.

Quite the opposite.

The interesting thing about what Burnham did as mayor wasn’t Manchester.

It was devolution.

The basic idea that the bloke in Whitehall doesn’t necessarily know what’s best for the woman waiting for a bus in Bolton.

Radical stuff.

Greater Manchester gradually secured more control over transport, skills, housing and regeneration. The Bee Network brought buses back under local control and is expanding towards a more integrated transport system.

Whatever your politics, there’s something interesting in that.

Decisions closer to the people affected by them.

And perhaps that’s the idea Britain should steal.

Not Manchester’s policies.

Manchester’s permission to do things differently.

Because Britain isn’t one place

This is where Westminster has always slightly baffled me.

We talk about “the British economy” as though we’re discussing one enormous town.

We’re not.

What’s good for central London isn’t necessarily good for Blackburn.

What’s right for Manchester isn’t automatically right for Cornwall.

What works in Birmingham might not work in rural Wales.

Glasgow isn’t Bristol.

Belfast isn’t Leeds.

Newcastle isn’t Norwich.

And that’s a good thing.

The United Kingdom is interesting precisely because it contains all these different places with different histories, industries, problems and opportunities.

Yet for generations we’ve built one of the most centralised political systems in the developed world and then wondered why half the country thinks Westminster hasn’t got a fucking clue what’s going on.

Maybe it hasn’t.

What if the Northern Powerhouse was never really about the North?

Perhaps we’ve been thinking about this backwards.

The phrase Northern Powerhouse makes it sound as though the objective is to create one enormous northern economic counterweight to London.

Manchester gets stronger.

Leeds gets stronger.

Liverpool gets stronger.

Newcastle gets stronger.

Excellent.

But why stop there?

Why shouldn’t Birmingham have considerably more control over Birmingham?

Why shouldn’t Cornwall have more control over Cornwall?

Why shouldn’t English regions have the sort of confidence and decision-making power that we’ve already accepted, in different constitutional forms, for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland?

And why should every good idea have to make a pilgrimage to London before somebody is allowed to try it?

Perhaps the real lesson of the Northern Powerhouse is:

Britain needs more powerhouses.

Lots of them.

Then it gets really interesting

Because being Mayor of Greater Manchester and being Prime Minister of the United Kingdom are two very different jobs.

As mayor, Burnham could point at Westminster and say:

You’re the problem.

Slight complication now.

He’s Westminster.

The excuses have changed.

And so has the scale.

Running an integrated bus network is one thing.

Defence.

International trade.

Energy security.

Immigration.

NATO.

Ukraine.

China.

The European Union.

The United States.

That’s a different game entirely.

And sooner or later you end up sitting across a table from Donald Trump.

Manchester meets Mar-a-Lago

Now there’s a television programme I’d watch.

Andy Burnham and Donald Trump are about as culturally different as two politicians in the Western world could possibly be.

One built his political identity around English regional government, public services and devolution.

The other built his around America First, tariffs, borders, deals and an ability to turn practically any political discussion into something about Donald Trump.

Burnham once described Trump’s politics as poisonous and said he wouldn’t be welcome in Manchester.

Now Burnham has to deal with him.

Funny old world.

As Prime Minister, you don’t get to say:

I don’t like that bloke, so I’m not talking to him.

The United States matters enormously to Britain.

Security matters.

Trade matters.

NATO matters.

Ukraine matters.

Intelligence cooperation matters.

You talk to the American President whether you’d invite him for a pint or not.

Burnham has already indicated he’s looking forward to meeting Trump and joked that he might need to polish his golf skills.

I’d pay decent money to watch Burnham explaining the Bee Network to Trump over the back nine.

“Donald, we’ve brought the buses under local control.”

“Andy, these are the greatest buses. Everybody says so. Incredible buses.”

Sorry.

Couldn’t resist.

But there’s a serious question underneath it

Can Trump control a Northern Powerhouse?

Not literally, obviously.

The question is whether a Britain that devolves more economic power to its cities and regions becomes more resilient internationally, not less.

Think about it.

America doesn’t really operate as one economic blob.

Texas competes.

California competes.

Florida competes.

New York competes.

Massachusetts competes.

States have distinct economic identities, tax structures, industries, universities and political priorities.

The federal government remains enormously powerful, but economic initiative doesn’t belong exclusively to Washington.

Why shouldn’t Britain learn something from that?

Not copy America.

God knows we don’t need to copy everything America does.

But perhaps we should look at countries around the world and ask a very un-British question:

Are they doing something better than us?

Germany has powerful Länder.

The United States has powerful states.

Switzerland has cantons.

Other countries distribute authority in ways that would make Whitehall break out in a rash.

Maybe Britain could become stronger internationally by becoming less centralised domestically.

And here’s where Trump becomes useful

Trump’s instinct is power.

Who has it?

Who needs whom?

What’s the deal?

What’s the leverage?

So imagine Britain ten years from now if Burnham’s experiment works.

Manchester isn’t waiting for London.

Neither is Liverpool.

Neither is Birmingham.

Neither is Newcastle.

Neither is Bristol.

Neither are the English regions more broadly.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland retain their own distinct constitutional identities and powers.

Different parts of Britain specialise.

Advanced manufacturing.

AI.

Life sciences.

Energy.

Defence.

Creative industries.

Finance.

Universities.

Technology.

And central government concentrates more heavily on the things that genuinely need to be national.

Suddenly when an American president looks at Britain, perhaps he doesn’t just see:

London.

He sees an interconnected collection of serious economic centres.

That’s leverage.

Of course, it could all go tits up

This is Uncommon Thoughts, not a party political broadcast.

Devolution isn’t magic.

Local politicians can waste money just as efficiently as national ones.

Sometimes considerably more enthusiastically because fewer journalists are watching.

More power requires more scrutiny.

Greater Manchester’s model isn’t automatically transferable everywhere.

And Burnham now has to prove that the instincts that worked for a city-region can survive national government.

There are already questions from business about precisely what his economic philosophy means in practice.

There should be.

Governments should be questioned.

Prime ministers should be challenged.

Including ones from the North.

Especially ones from the North.

We’re very capable of producing our own dickheads.

But something has changed

For decades British politics has talked about levelling up.

It’s one of those phrases that sounds brilliant until you ask what it actually means.

Maybe the mistake was thinking Westminster needed to level everybody up.

Perhaps Westminster needs to let go.

Give places power.

Give them responsibility.

Give them budgets.

Then hold them accountable for what they do with them.

If Manchester makes a mess of something, Manchester owns it.

If Birmingham finds a better way, let Manchester nick the idea.

If Glasgow does something brilliant, England should be grown-up enough to learn from Scotland.

If an American state has solved a problem better than we have, steal the bloody idea.

If Denmark has.

Steal theirs.

Singapore?

Have a look.

Australia?

What are they doing?

Stop assuming the best answer automatically lives within ten minutes of the Palace of Westminster.

Tony Wilson would probably approve

That’s what connects this to the last Uncommon Thought.

Wilson’s great contribution wasn’t simply music.

It was confidence.

The belief that Manchester could make something culturally important without asking somebody elsewhere whether it was allowed.

Burnham’s political experiment in Greater Manchester was built around a strangely similar proposition.

Give us the tools and we’ll have a go ourselves.

Now he’s Prime Minister.

So perhaps his biggest achievement wouldn’t be turning Britain into a Northern Powerhouse.

It would be creating a country full of them.

Manchester.

Liverpool.

Leeds.

Sheffield.

Newcastle.

Birmingham.

Bristol.

Cornwall.

And every other place with the ideas, people and ambition to build something better.

Not competing against each other because one has to win.

Competing with each other because all of us get better when somebody raises the bar.

And then competing together with America, China, Germany, France, India and whoever else intends to spend the next twenty years eating our lunch.

So can Andy Burnham do for Britain what he did for Manchester?

I haven’t got a clue.

Neither has anybody else yet.

That’s what makes it interesting.

But I hope he tries something bigger than simply running Westminster with a Mancunian accent.

Because Britain doesn’t need another Prime Minister promising to give the regions a bit more attention.

We’ve heard that one.

It needs somebody willing to give away some actual power.

Which is considerably harder.

Tony Wilson thought Manchester didn’t need permission to matter.

Andy Burnham showed that Manchester could be trusted with more power to get things done.

Now he’s sitting in Number 10.

Perhaps the question isn’t whether Manchester’s man can run Britain.

Perhaps it’s whether the man from Manchester can finally accept that Britain doesn’t need one man to run all of it.

And when Donald Trump eventually asks who’s in charge?

There’s a very British answer available.

We are.

All of us.

Just perhaps a little closer to home.