The definitive guide to 'Manchesterism'

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0:37Hello and welcome to Coffeehouse Shots. I'm Noah Hoffman and today I'm delighted to be joined by James Heal and Tully Fraser who is making her debut on the podcast. She is the new commissioning editor and writer at large here at The Spectator. Today we are going to be discussing all things Manchesterism with Andy Burnham inching closer and closer to entering Downing Street. It is the number one question on every politico's mind. What is Manchesterism? What does it mean? Is it even a thing? And I couldn't think of two better informed people to discuss this very pertinent question with. Tully, you were born and grew up in Manchester.

1:19Yeah, 18 years. But for those listening, they'll think there's no chance that she grew up in Manchester. I don't have any of the accent. We have all the receipts to prove it, though. And given that, what is Manchesterism? So Manchesterism, this is Andy Burnham's supposedly guiding philosophy and what can be replicated across the country, you know, to boost growth and productivity. That's the sell. Manchesterism did not begin with him. It began in the 19th century with Manchester liberalism and people sort of more aligned with what you know as Margaret Thatcher than Andy Burnham. Sort of free trade, laissez-faire.

1:57And then it grew and Manchester liberalism sort of continued, took on a new form. Labour councils and Labour council leaders in Manchester before Andy Burnham sort of realised that, you know, left wing ideologies weren't working there, started working with Thatcher's government, started doing some not so left wing things. And that's where the current iteration of Manchesterism really comes from. It just doesn't happen to be Burnham's version. I think what's quite interesting is what kind of version of Manchesterism are we going to see is the question. And in the leadership race, Burnham in some ways has talked left, but governed right.

2:34And this is the kind of striking contrast at the heart of it, which is that actually the Manchesterism that he's talked about, you could if you wanted to be sort of facetious, you could say strong policing, Stephen Watson, you could say free market policies by having public sector private partnerships, giving land away to private sector development. and you could also say given Manchester Labour's continual success, one party state, it's basically more of a Singapore than it is a kind of socialist utopia. Now I think there's obviously a number of interesting ideas in here but I think what's so telling is that the kind of T-tenants of Manchesterism are actually ones not necessarily associated with left-wing ideology.

3:07Take devolution for instance. Now devolution can be left or right. It was quite striking to me that the broad history of the Labour Party between 1918 and the 1990s was actually fairly sceptical of devolution. You could choose everything to a unitary state. So that isn't inherently a left-wing coded thing. What is quite striking is the way in which Andy Burnham talks about his ideas. It's the idea of community. It's more the social sense, solidarity. It's more vibes-based rather than kind of the economic policies he's been doing. And of course, what's so striking is that not even the economics is necessarily new.

3:34It's much more these two men, Howard Burnham's scene and Richard Lees. Yeah, I mean, what Andy Burnham has sort of done with Manchester is get a great inheritance. and that's part of why the city has done relatively well sort of growth-wise. But whether he can sort of replicate that across the country, I mean, even Labour figures told me for my piece in the magazine this week that that just isn't possible. You sort of can't take what's happened in Manchester and just try and use the same things across the country because it's taken decades and it's taken the inheritance that he got to get there.

4:09Of course, and it's also basically England's third biggest city. You can argue about it for second if you want to Birmingham. I'm not a Birmingham myself. But, you know, the point is, it's a major metropolitan area. And as you say, you quote Graham Stringer, one of the MPs that's a former council leader, who says that it's a nonsense to say you can have good growth in every postcode. I mean, and some people say if you have to have winners, you'll have losers too. Well, this is where Burnham's Manchesterism becomes confused. And Graham uses that word as well. Is that Andy Burnham says, you know, Manchesterism is the end of neoliberalism.

4:40where we're sort of tackling trickle-down economics, you know, that doesn't work. Manchesterism is kind of based on that. And even his own allies, like Louise Hay, defend Manchesterism in those terms. So she will say, oh, well, the growth in the centre, you know, will trickle out to the suburbs. That is trickle-down economics. And the thing is, it's not worked that well for the rest of greater Manchester because it's not just the city centre. if you look at places like where burnham's constituency is makefield in wigan wigan isn't doing so well also in gorton and denton a lot of conversations from activists who went to visit there was shock at the depravity that they saw the amount of fly tipping you know a lot of sort of rundown businesses and houses so clearly it didn't reach every single part of where he was he represented as mayor there's like Bolton, Bury, Wigan you know all of these areas they're not feeling as great about Manchesterism as perhaps the city centre is and that's not to say you know that that in itself is is flawed if Burnham was sort of advocating for nerdy term is that agglomeration where you know the city centre just sort of sakes it all up fine it's working really well.

5:59But if you're saying it benefits everyone, which is the sort of like lefty version of it, it's just not quite true. James, I was going to ask, are the Labour MPs, particularly on the left, who have been so supportive of Andy Burnham, conscious of this contradiction between talking left and governing right? Or do you think they sort of try and keep it quiet and bury it because they actually like what they see? I think that to move away from Manchester for a second, you know, They look at the broader things such as James Pennell coming in. They look at some of the comments he's made sort of downplaying the idea he's going to rally against the fiscal rules.

6:35And there's a few sort of warning signs there. There's a little bit of sense of, hmm, what are we going to get with this guy? But right now, I think they're just delighted after Keir Starmer too, who gets politics. And I think that's the thing that unites everyone across the Labour Party, is just that after this sometimes entitlement naivete of the Prime Minister, you're going to have someone who gets that. I think there's a genuine sense of relief right now. Even Alcanzar's pulled out. There's the sense that no one's going to challenge the prime minister. That said, I do think there are people, not just on the left, but across the party who'd like some questions to Andy Burnham.

7:03It is quite striking to me how little kind of way of scrutiny he's had. He had one Reddit session, prescriptive questions. You had one LBC interview with Andrew Marr where he didn't really say much. And then we had this statement in The Times today talking about foreign policy, which was really just fairly banal in its cliches, talking about we need warfare to help with the domestic front. I mean, this is the kind of platitudinous stuff you expect of a junior minister busking it. And so we've got these kind of questions about what is Manchesterism, and we're discussing it now. These questions play out in the PLP as well.

7:34And I think next Monday, there was going to be a hustings for the different candidates to come along. Well, there's only one man who's going to get it. But I do think it would be wise of Andy Burnham to stand there before his colleagues and say, what do I mean Manchesterism answer questions for an hour? He's going to get it. He may as well start answering it. He's going to become promised later that week. And I think it would be a good way of acting on what he's saying about helping colleagues and trying to listen to the people much more. The point about Manchesterism in all of this is I think that there are two critiques, one of which has more merit than the others.

8:02I think the critique which doesn't really have much merit is the idea, oh, well, he's from Manchester. All he cares about is Manchester. No, that's not the case. And I do think you can look at the success and have some applications across the country. That being said, there are some people in the party who think, actually, you can't do what Manchester has done on a national scale. to take the obvious points, such as the BBC moving there. That creates a lot of jobs. You can't have dozens of BBCs popping up in your maker fields and all the different areas, et cetera, that we're talking about on a more smaller scale.

8:31And also there's the question of resources and where does something go which benefits someone else. I think that's the issue with levelling up, which was that it was basically always a sort of zero-sum game where money from a pot was going someplace and not the other. So I do think people want these questions answered. There is a sense in the PLP, even people who like Andy Burnham, and it was probably wise for him to go and face them on Monday as it was initially attended. Tully, what lessons should Burnham take from his time as mayor and is there anything he did during his tenure that he should leave in the past?

9:01I think a good way to sort of frame it is from a source of mine who said, in so far as the city has outperformed other places, it's because the original Manchester figures did a bunch of things Burnham would not approve of and which the left moaned about endlessly. So what he has to realise is that he might have to take on the left of his party in quite a firm way to be able to achieve anything like Manchester has been able to do, you know, in the bits where it has succeeded. And that might be quite hard because obviously Starmer has faced problems taking on people on the left within the party.

9:38he's going to have to do a lot to try and figure out the bits of Manchester that have been a success and actually how replicable that is because even allies of his and those around him who are talking about his version of Manchesterism don't quite know so he's going to have to do a lot of thinking before he gets into number 10. And of course the number 10 north is the thing people will be saying to me like yeah we get it he likes Manchester he launched a speech in Manchester but maybe number to North in Leeds. Leeds is not feeling a lot of love right now, just to show that he is just more than kind of Manchester.

10:11And of course, I think that that's, we're going to see a lot more of those kind of projects. It can't just be about Manchester and London. I think there'll be others in demand. I mean, there's also Wales and Scotland as well. We haven't heard him speak much on those two either. Thank you very much, Tully. Thank you, James. And thank you for listening to Coffeehouse Shots.

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