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Andy Burnham's grand vision to ‘rewire' Britain rests on shaky foundations, the Prime Minister in waiting has been warned.His first speech since formally putting himself forward to succeed Keir Starmer focused heavily on devolution as a means of achieving growth and making public spending go further.The ‘biggest rebalance of power our country has ever seen' would put responsibility for post-16 education, housing, transport and welfare in the hands of mayors.He also pledged to embark on a mass council housebuilding programme, establish a ‘No10 North' based in Manchester and to reform business rates.While the ambition has been welcomed by local government, warnings have been sounded about the need to shore up the resource-starved sector first.Chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit, Jonathan Carr West, said: ‘We have seen ambitious visions before, and we have seen many governments come unstuck because of their failure to empower councils sufficiently.‘No10 North, reindustrialisation, house building: none of this works without councils that have the capacity to deliver it.'As reported in The MJ this week, the Centre for Cities has called for fiscal devolution as a means to bring about the growth sought. Director of policy and research Ant Breach said: ‘It would free metro mayors from the Treasury's policy cycles and give them access to guaranteed long-term revenue streams, freeing them up to do more long-term development and target far higher growth and productivity for their areas as a result.'In his speech Burnham acknowledged the sometimes fraught relationship between local and central government when looking back on his time as Greater Manchester mayor.He said: ‘I have had 10 years of fighting the Whitehall machine blocking this place's progress. I am simply not prepared to accept the same for any other area coming after Greater Manchester.'But Tony Travers, associate dean of the school of public policy at the London School of Economics, told a Centre for Cities webinar on fiscal devolution on Tuesday that a Burnham government will face major problems convincing Whitehall of the benefits of devolution.He said: ‘There is a lot of civil service to convince. That unit in Manchester is going to have to work very hard on Whitehall departments that don't even trust local or regional government.‘They think you can't trust people outside the centre to take decisions. There will have to be a great psychological leap to get things changed.'

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DEVOLUTION

Warning for Burnham over 'rewiring' prospects

By Martin Ford, Neil Merrick | 02 July 2026

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