Is Andy Burnham’s Manchester Brand Good Enough for the UK?

So here we are. Another new Prime Minister apparent, another undemocratic process in which a political party decides – as an internal matter – the appointee to the country’s top official political position. 

It is another reminder of the real workings of the UK’s parliamentary electoral system. The seats in parliament which give Labour its big legislative majority were decided in 2024 and it is within this latest 2024 settlement of the political forces in Westminster that a new leader may be chosen by the majority party and given highest office with minimal consultation of the public. It will largely remain this way until 2029, before it once again decides on a new settlement of political forces for five years. Remember this is not a bug of the Westminster system, it’s a feature. 

If it feels undemocratic that is because, in the deepest sense of the word, it is. But then we are talking about a political system operating via a complex and uncodified constitution, where up until very recently (i.e. still in living memory), women did not have voting equality with men and the concept of citizenship had no solid basis; it was not given such until after the Second World War when the political establishment in Britain needed a way to reconcile the decolonisation taking place with a host of questions about the status of various persons as subjects of the Crown.

Here this point serves merely as a reminder that though we may feel justified in asking ‘should we really be having another change of PM, again to one crowned by party rather than given an electoral mandate?’ Andy Burnham’s imminent investiture as the chief Minister of the Crown without so much as a nod of approval from us mere plebs is perfectly British. Rest assured, there are some pretty bad adverts for republicanism out there right now, too. Yet the bigger issue of the day is how much heavy lifting Burnham is asking the ‘Manchester’ brand to do for his public relations, now in full-frontal charm offensive mode. 

Alongside his most recent experience with the mayoralty of Manchester, Burnham has tried to complement his achievements with a pseudophilosophy of government branded ‘Manchesterism’. Most attempts at explaining what this Manchesterism stands for give a strong impression that it targets loss of public control over essential goods and services and believes good government entails leveraging the purchasing power of the state. So much so obvious, but they are unable to go beyond this basic direction of aim. Writ large on the UK, this approach is going to face some tough obstacles, and it is yet empty of details as to how to balance the high capital investment this will require with government receipts and borrowing. 

In March Burnham was the keynote speaker at the Centre for Cities conference where he attempted to outline his approach. According to a conference observer, a “clear expression” of this ‘Manchesterism’ was to be found in the example of the Bee Network of buses: “a locally controlled service that directly affects residents’ everyday lives but had previously been neglected by Westminster.” Given this definition, it is hard to understand the difference between Burnham’s ‘Manchesterism’ and simply the role of an effective city mayor generally. 

True, Manchester has recently seen economic growth and dynamism that makes some other UK cities envious, and such successes should be celebrated. But as the New York Times has reported recently, this owes as much or more to past Manchester City Council senior officials Richard Leese and Howard Bernstein. 

Admittedly, Burnham has nailed his colours to the mast when suggesting ‘place-first’ politics – essentially devolution – was a key facilitator of his political agenda. But as the same observer at the Centre for Cities noted, “devolution is one of the policy areas where relatively strong cross-party consensus currently exists.” 

In Burnham’s talk of reigniting the spirit of industrial Manchester, however, he actually gives away the source material he is reappropriating for his political brand. For in fact, the ‘Manchesterism’ brand has already once been claimed – nearly two centuries ago –  and not for the vague ‘business-friendly socialism’ that Burnham likes to reference. 

Richard Cobden, a prominent pacifist Radical and businessman from Manchester, and his associates in the Anti-Corn Law League, ran a popular campaign for free trade, culminating in Cobden’s election to parliament and the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1840s. This essentially signalled the start of the British establishment’s love affair with Laissez faire (with notable challenges from an ‘imperial preference’ system at times). 

The ‘Manchester School’ or Manchesterismus, as this approach was also known, presupposed a harmony of interests amongst individuals who are self-interested rational economic actors; for a British imperial merchant to do well for himself in such a world was to do a universal good. This became criticised for its moral blindness in permitting (or perhaps encouraging) the worst excesses committed by modern era colonial empires all around the globe and cementing such hierarchies in place, while also neglecting to see the potential it harboured for destabilising violent revisionism towards satisfied imperial heartlands. 

The reason this matters directly today is that it suggests Burnham’s pseudophilosophy is hollow. And when the ancient and creaking institute of the UK delivers, there are no refunds, even if a popular political brand turns out to have been reinvented solely because it happened to come in the right shade of localism.

Illustration: Will Allen/Europinion