Questioning Manchesterism
 

Before he even took over the leadership of the Labour Party, the warning directed at Andy Burnham was that being the mayor of Manchester and being Prime Minister were two very different things. Patronising criticism, to be sure, but also perhaps containing a grain of truth. Burnham has turned the economic success of Manchester into a policy proposal: Manchesterism. The recipe seems simple: give local leaders more power, and they will be able to drive local economic growth and with it, social progress. But as Aadya Bahl warns this week, “there is a danger in assuming that every place can follow the same path”. There is also a second danger: “treating Manchesterism as a success story that is complete.” 

Many of the things that made Manchester a success story were there long before Burnham took over as mayor. Decades of cross-authority collaboration, but also a network of universities working closely with local government and businesses. Not all places in the country have that institutional infrastructure waiting in the background. The other thing to keep in mind is that Manchesterism hasn’t really solved the key problem facing the UK economy – a huge productivity gap between London and the rest of the country. Manchester is still 35 per cent less productive that the capital. Devolution has helped narrow the gap, but the next phase of Manchesterism has to go beyond that. Decisions that are politically difficult at a national level around “land use, housing development, transport investment and infrastructure” are no less difficult to make at a local level. To use that old cliche, there is no such things as a silver bullet policy.