Burnham calls for UK power reset, more authority for regions

Andy Burnham used a speech at the People’s History Museum in Manchester on June 29 to lay out a 10-year mission to shift more authority from London to the regions and recast British politics around what he called “good growth.” He said the country should choose collaboration over argument, and he paired that pitch with a proposal for a Manchester-based operation nicknamed “No. 10 North,” meant to act as a northern nerve centre for government.

The timing sharpened the stakes. Keir Starmer resigned as UK prime minister and Labour leader on June 22, and he remains caretaker prime minister until the party chooses a new leader. Burnham returned to Parliament in a June 2026 by-election for Makerfield, and his speech fed speculation inside Labour that he is positioning himself as the party’s most serious alternative to the Westminster status quo. He has been widely viewed as a prime minister-in-waiting, a label that reflects how closely every move now is watched.

Burnham’s argument went well beyond regional economics. By calling for a larger transfer of power away from Whitehall, he was pressing on the same fault lines that have shaped British politics for years: inequality between London and the rest of the country, weak productivity in many regions, and frustration that too many decisions still flow from the centre. The promise echoes earlier efforts to clean up and modernise politics by changing who holds power, but those efforts have repeatedly stopped short of a full institutional reset.

The Manchester setting mattered. Burnham chose a venue tied to Britain’s left-wing political history to present what allies have described as a new direction and a circuit-breaker for a system he says is broken. His pitch also drew on his own political record. He was first elected mayor of Greater Manchester in May 2017, won re-election in May 2021 and again in May 2024, and before that served as MP for Leigh from 2001 until he left Westminster in 2017.

That background gives his devolution message unusual credibility, but it also raises the test he now faces. The Greater Manchester mayoralty itself was created through England’s devolution process to move more power from central government to local government. Burnham is now arguing that the experiment should go much further, with regions gaining not just more responsibility, but a stronger claim on how the country is run.