The Burnham blueprint, as told by one of its architects

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, devolution, devolution, devolution. Andy Burnham's radical plan to rewire Britain.

0:23As a proud resident of Stockport, I've been one of Andy Burnham's constituents for almost a decade now. Each month, I dutifully pay a bit of my council tax towards his mayoral mission. And you know what? I've seen Greater Manchester thrive on his watch. And so I know what it's like when he's in charge. And now, he wants to do for the rest of the country what he's done for my region. Good morning, everybody.

0:50Are you ready for this? On Monday, he stood up in the People's History Museum in Manchester and delivered his economic manifesto for an Andy Burnham premiership. So let me state my clear intention as I put myself forward. True to the motto of this city, I am going to do things differently.

1:15Barring an 11th hour challenge or some unforeseen calamity, Burnham will have moved into number 10 by the end of July. But he says he wants to build another number 10, a Manchester one. Number 10 North will be the nerve centre of a rewired Britain. What he's promising is radical. We will bring about the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen.

1:47But just how credible is his plan? And how will he pay for it? I hope this is a moment for people to return to the Labour Party, see some hope and some space for conversation and debate about where the party should go. That's today's guest, one of the architects of Andy Burnham's third, final and almost certainly successful bid to run the country. From The Guardian, I'm Helen Pidd. Today in Focus, the Burnham blueprint for Britain.

2:22Neil Lawson, welcome to Today in Focus. Nice to see you. Nice to be here. So you are the director of the progressive think tank Compass, but more recently I've seen you described as an Andy Burnham whisperer. How far back do you guys go? I go back a long way with Andy, particularly if you think of the new Labour era. There was football played a big part in everything. He was an advisor to Tessa Jow and I was an advisor to Gordon Brown. And we played football together. There was a team called Demon Eyes. I was the goalkeeper and he was the star attacker. Famous goal hanger, wasn't he? Always just hanging around waiting for the opportunity.

3:00Yeah, he didn't put any work in. He just loved the glory of getting the goals and whether that's a metaphor for his premiership or not that we see. And then our paths didn't cross for quite a long time. I became much more critical of the Blair government. He was obviously in the cabinet and for Gordon. And I didn't get behind him in either 2010 or 2015. Didn't think he was different enough. But then he went to Manchester and we reconnected a few years ago around, I think it was his last mayoral campaign. I helped with a bit of policy stuff. In 2024, that would have been. Yeah, and then it was just apparent to me that he was going to potentially could be the next leader of the Labour Party.

3:39So we reconnected a lot more and worked a lot together to try and get in there. Oh, and you're nearly, nearly there. I think we are there. I think we are there. I'm joking. I'm joking. You never know. You don't. And so as well as running Compass, you were also one of the founders of another group called Mainstream. Yeah. Mainstream has been described in The Guardian on the weekend by one Labour MP as being a front operation for an Andy Burnham premiership. Is that true? and what has mainstream been doing to clear his path to power, which was far from easy or certain just a couple of months ago?

4:11So I'm involved in these two organisations, Compass, which I'm the director of, which is an all-party left-wing kind of pressure group doing cross-party progressive alliance work. Burnham had spoken at the 2025 May National Conference for Compass and that was his big, I think, national re-entry into... It was at the Ministry of Sound, wasn't it? It was at the minute. We booked that for a Saturday afternoon. And so there were plenty of no trainer jokes going on. It's the latest any Labour people have been in the Ministry of Sound on a Saturday. I'm just glad to get past the door police. Thank you, Neil and Francis and Compass.

4:47So we showcased Andy then, but Compass saw its job as pulling the Labour Party into the 21st century, a plural, more radical kind of politics. but pulling wasn't enough and we decided you have to get back in and push it as well yeah so we set up a solely Labour Party organisation called Mainstream and the idea of Mainstream was that most mainstream Labour Party members do want public ownership of the utilities they do want a wealth tax etc so we wanted to grab that territory but it definitely wasn't set up just as a Burnham vehicle but a combination of Compass and Mainstream people have you know helped support Andy over the last two years, ideas, organisation, a range of different things to try and get him there.

5:31As you said, you didn't support Burnham on his first two attempts to become leader of the Labour Party. What do you see in him now? Do you think he's changed? Or are you just recognising something new in him? I think it's probably a combination of both. The thing about Andy is that he's not abstract or theoretical in his politics. You couldn't say who he's kind of leading intellectual light was he doesn't cite people he doesn't refer to people particularly he doesn't quote them he kind of makes up his mind about things through his lived experience of working on the job so his experience of hillsborough shaped his views about the state same with the blood crisis um same with covid and his attitude to you know to london and then generally being the mayor of greater manchester and seeing the possibilities of devolution and how we need to rewire the state he kind of seems to learn things from practice and experience and that's quite interesting because then it becomes quite deep and quite organic as opposed to just you know theoretical or you know a passing ship in the night changes his mind on stuff but as we see from things like his appointment of james burnell his chief of staff you know there's there's continuities from the past you know everyone is complex and andy's a complex character and i think it's up to the left you know to mount pressure now to bring out you know the more radical elements of of andy burnham because there will be certainly forces in around the labor party that will be trying to push him in a more orthodox direction.

6:52And you just mentioned James Purnell there. So he was, they were friends, weren't they? They shared an office in Westminster. He was in the football team too. Was he? And on the left, there's been quite a lot of disappointment about James Purnell's appointment. I'm not saying necessarily get rid of child benefit. I'm saying let's order all the things that we care about and let's see the ones that are most important. Well, what's at the bottom? What do we care least about that we're currently paying for? I think winter fuel allowances. I think free bus passes. He was very high up in the BBC, wasn't he?

7:19but then he's been a lobbyist for the past few years you know is he really going to stand up to these vested interests if he's got somebody like james pernell whispering into his ear yeah and as i understand it i mean you know if you're prime minister you're going to want someone around you who you know probably love and trust and you can understand that james is a good manager he's he's managed some big institutions and organizations now he obviously knows how the british state and number 10 and different departments you know operate and is he gonna you know help andy get what Andy wants. I would think that that was the nature of the deal.

7:51Is he a kind of radical agent of change type person? Probably not. But you know, maybe that's Andy Burnham. And that's the most important person to be those things.

8:13Let's talk a bit about this big speech that he gave at the People's History Museum in Manchester on Monday. As a long-term Greater Manchester resident, I was pleased that he made the lobby hacks traipse up to Manchester to give that speech. And then not allow them to ask any questions. Well, yeah, I'm less in favour of that. Three word slogans have had a lot of success, haven't they, in politics in recent years. Take back control. Stop the boat. If you're going to sum up this speech, it's probably devolution, devolution, devolution, to borrow a Blairism. And he's promised this massive shift of power from Westminster to the rest of the country.

8:46And this is all going to be orchestrated, he says, from Number 10 in the North, which he says is going to be the nerve centre for a rewired Britain. And it's been suggested that Number 10 North will have three clear tasks when it comes to devolution, and that will be to increase the public ownership of essential utilities such as water, energy and housing, renationalisation and regenerating towns as well as control over housing policy. It's been reported that he's going to spend weekends at home in Greater Manchester. It's not quite Mar-a-Lago, it's a semi-detached house in Wigan. But what else do you know about how this new office will actually work in practice?

9:22Well, I don't think we know yet how it's going to work in practice But he's given what leaders are supposed to do, a very clear direction of travel. You know, people can be in no doubt that he wants to devolve massive amounts of power, not just to Manchester, but as he said yesterday, from Manchester out to all the corners of the country. You know, it's not unsimilar to what Johnson promised after 2019, the kind of double deal after, you know, we get power back from Brussels, you know, back to the country. And then it was supposed to be spread out to the rest of the country. To encourage local leadership.

9:55And I want to return to that point. It's not just this country is the most economically imbalanced. It's the most centralised. And that's because for many decades, central government in London relentlessly crushed local leadership. And we must be honest about why that was necessary. It was because we were then in the grip. He wasn't serious about that. Burnham is serious about that. And there'll be a lot of competing centralising forces in the British state, the Treasury not least, you know, which has got to be, you know, met and encountered. You know, the devil will be in the detail. But, you know, at least we've got a proper mission now, if you want to use that terminology.

10:31And he's starting to put in place the architecture through this number 10 in the north. So I think we should be really encouraged by this. You know, clearly there's a lot more work to be done, but no one can be in any doubt about the direction of travel. of a Burnham administration. And let's talk about the nuts and bolts of how he will actually devolve power. Because, you know, it sort of seems to me it's all good and well in Greater Manchester, a place that since Burnham has been mayor has been dominated by Labour. There's been the odd Tory leader, there's Lib Dems in Stockport, where I live.

10:59But Greater Manchester has also got a really long history of working together and it's worked well. But then if you're trying to replicate that model in other places, they might be rural places, they might be counties, they might be seaside towns, or they might just be places that basically basket cases. Councils like Kirkley's in West Yorkshire. Who runs Kirkley's? Well nobody because they can't even agree on a leader. Reform got the most votes in May and they're scrapping with the Greens. You've got mayors like Andrea Jenkins in Lincolnshire. She is the ex-Tory. She defected to reform. You might know her as the one who likes to sing at party conferences.

11:33An MP told me once that she makes decisions using tarot cards and I'm sure that they were joking but you get the gist. You've got to trust these people haven't you these local leaders and you're trusting them with huge budgets and a lot more power so the point about devolution and democracy is you can't just kind of fix it and do it when it suits you and suits your party but the progressive view on this thing is that you know overall given time given space given support people make better decisions not worse decisions and they will make judgments on those poor mayors and poor councils you know etc but ultimately you've got to you know you've got to trust the people and you've got to think that if you give the resources the powers and the money to local authorities then you're going to start attracting people who are a better caliber why would you go into local government now when you can't even have the money to do the statutory services let alone you know other things that you would like to do you know politically yeah so you've got to break that logjam clearly there are some risks involved and some councils won't use the money wisely and sensibly they'll be found out by their electorate and they'll vote for other people that will use the extra resources and the power more effectively.

12:41We can't be hidebound by the worst councils. We've got to be led by the best. And as well as talking about devolving power, he's also talked about renationalising various industries. Sometimes he talks about renationalising. Sometimes he talks about taking greater public control of essential services, which is what he's done in Greater Manchester. The buses are now£2 for any journey. When I moved there 13 years ago, it was£3.50. So it's got cheaper in that time. How do you understand what he is actually proposing when it comes to services and utilities? I don't think every I has been dotted and every T has been crossed on all of this.

13:16He knows that at the very least, we need to take control of more infrastructure, utility style services and operations like buses. And I think broadly, it's worked in Manchester. He doesn't own the buses. The bus companies still own the buses. But they've been brought under one system. He's painted them yellow. Yeah, he's painted them yellow. It's become a much more uniform, you know, holistic service. But I think we could live with control of buses potentially. But on things like water and energy, these are, you know, natural monopolies. They're not providing a very good service. The shareholders are benefiting.

13:52The executives are benefiting. And we're getting sewage pumped into the rivers, into the seas, leaks everywhere and prices going up. Now, we've got to find an answer to that. It looks like the first test of that could be Thames water. and you know he can help precipitate the end of thames water being in private ownership but doesn't that mean that the public purse will have to buy them out well i think i'm not a i'm not a you know a utilities lawyer but i think there are clever ways around it in essence it makes no sense for this to be in the private sector anymore and he's going to have to bite the bullet on water and energy in particular we can look at others i mean it's interesting that he's looking at public house building you know mass public house building for the first time good luck with that everybody says they're going to do that yeah they are they are but again it's the sort of area where i mean he's absolutely certain about it you know and he'll have thought about it i think there are questions about whether it's going to be you know just councils who do it whether there's going to be a national house building kind of new entity that's going to be responsible for it but undoubtedly it's going to happen because i know that that's in his blood you know it is but also in his blood is saying to people in makerfield who didn't want a new housing development i'm on your side i will I'll oppose it.

15:01It's also in his blood to allow Stockport, one of the ten Greater Manchester councils, to sort of flounce out of the joint planning process because they didn't want to have to build houses where they didn't want to. I'm not saying there won't be local incidents where a kind of nimbyism or whatever else is going to play. And he was in the middle of a by-election where every vote counted and no one knew how big his majority was going to be. And he's a real-life politician. He does struggle to say no, though. Yeah, maybe, maybe. you know he does struggle to say no and he does like to be liked yeah and he is going to upset some people he's going to have to you know maybe that's what James Pennell is going to help him do he's going to be the bad part well maybe maybe but there are going to be warm friends and there are going to have to be some enemies and there are going to have to be some winners and some losers that's you know that's inevitable I mean both because that's right but also that's how you define yourself as a leader and a prime minister about who you're for and who you're against How is he going to pay for all of this stuff?

15:59He's going to either have to increase taxes or make cuts or both. And the Andy Burnham that I viewed up close has not really had to do those things in Greater Manchester. Yeah, you don't. You get your allocation of money from the Treasury and you decide how you spend it. And so these are more testing moments. But he knows he's going to need more money. He's going to have to look creatively at wealth taxes. Do you think he will? Is he a believer? I think he has to. I think he has to because we can't allow... And is it about unearned wealth, do you think? Yeah, I know. No, I think it will be rebalancing between, you know, unearned wealth and income, you know, and trying to rebalance that in, you know, I mean, it could be just, you know, equalisation or greater equalisation of, you know, capital gains tax and income tax.

16:38But he could look at different forms of wealth taxes, land taxes, you know, all of that is now has to be in play because it's the right thing to do. You know, and I think in the medium to long term, he will rebalance things like the welfare bill. But I think he'll do it with a sense of, you know, people's lives at the forefront and the quality of their lives and the support they're getting and the training and care that they need. Not thinking we're doing this just to front load a bunch of cuts. Coming up, what will Andy Burnham do about immigration and the climate crisis?

17:27We touched at the top that journalists were rightly cross, I think, on Monday that Burnham didn't take any questions. But he's not going to be able to remain unaccountable for too long. And one of the big issues that he completely swerved on Monday was immigration. What do you think his position is on immigration? Can we expect him to be wrapping himself in the union jack? Do you think he's going to, he sort of indicated that he's on board with Shabana Mahmood's reforms, you know, which propose doubling the length of time that immigrants stay in the UK before they can get indefinite leave to remain, making it a more hostile environment, really.

18:02So I think he'll strike a position which recognises that immigration has become a litmus test of government's ability to run the country. and if you can't get that right what can you get right um and whether we like it or not you know that position is there so i think he will want an effective border control um and i personally don't see anything wrong with that as long as it's done in the most humane and careful kind and fair way i don't think we'll get any of the performative cruelty that shibana mcmood has been practicing in terms of kicking down on asylum seekers and immigrants. That just in his way.

18:43No Island of Strangers vibes. No, I mean, none of that negative stuff at all and absolutely no wrapping himself in the Union Jack. I mean, I think he's just too confident in himself. You know, he's got, you know, his civic kind of nationalism. You know, he's got Everton as his identity. He's got his ideas. And that's a much richer form of meaning, identity, place, etc. than the flag. and I think this is a welcome thing. Let's talk about who will be his Chancellor. He's not giving anything away but Ed Miliband is the name that is most widely circulated, that he is the likely new occupant of 11 Downing Street.

19:18But I thought it was interesting how Net Zero did not get a mention, it didn't get a look-in in this speech on Monday and that is an about turn from the Andy Burnham that I've watched up close in Greater Manchester. He was re-elected in 2024 on a manifesto that said, you know net zero is a it's a real engine for growth in the economy and he shied away from that yesterday do you think we can the fact that that was absent in the speech maybe suggest that Ed Miliband is not a shoo-in um there are other things that were mentioned yesterday and I don't think we should read anything in into it he will know in his mind you know who he wants he obviously can't appoint anyone until he's prime minister it would be absurd you know if if if he did but no one can spend this summer and pretend that you know environment isn't a big impact on people's lives on the future of the economy you know do you think it should be ed milliband do i personally yeah but you need someone for two reasons you need someone who can run the treasury and not have the treasury run them and you need someone who's broadly in tune with your soft left political economy that you know that burnham's been setting out and and that is you know ed milliband um and in his speech he really didn't touch on any foreign policy issues what do you think his approach is going to be to foreign policy and particularly his approach to Trump.

20:32I think, you know, if we learn the lessons of how he does domestic politics, he does it in a kind of consensual way. You know, he doesn't stack up enemies. He doesn't go for people. He thinks quite long term about what the position is. He flatters people as well. That will go down with Trump. He does. He does flatter people and he's good with people. He's at ease with people. So I think all of that will be worked into how he approaches foreign affairs. I mean he has made it very clear that he is here as a domestic prime minister I think his appointment as foreign secretary will be a big appointment because that will be a genuine foreign secretary who will be tasked with doing all the foreign affairs and the prime minister will be brought in as and when the prime minister needs to be brought in as opposed to what we've had for the last two years is the prime minister is in effect foreign secretary so I think that is going to change and that's right for that to change and he will do what he has to in this area and no more.

21:36Let's talk a bit about how the Labour Party might change with Andy Burnham at the top. He talks about how he's returned to a Westminster that feels unhappier than it used to be. And he talks about a sort of change in the way the whipping system has been used, particularly under Storm as a kind of punishment. You were nearly kicked out of the Labour Party, weren't you? I was nearly kicked out, yeah. After 40 odd years. What was your crime, remind me? Oh, I liked a tweet by a Liberal Democrat MP. Right, OK. I know, right? OK, but you were ultimately found not guilty. Yeah, they put me on the naughty step for about 18 months before they decided that I was no...

22:11They couldn't, you know, enforce the charge and let me remain. So do you think we're going to see a more broad church Labour Party? Without doubt. I think, you know, Andy Burnham doesn't see people as adversaries. He doesn't see people as enemies. You'll notice during the Maker Fiat election, he didn't attack the reform candidate at all, really. I've never heard him bitch about anybody. He doesn't. He doesn't do it in public and he doesn't do it in private. You know, so he doesn't see the world in that for and against kind of way. I think he's fairly secure in himself. And so, therefore, if other people have used, you know, they are things to be learned from, not things to be squashed.

22:46He's not a massively factional person. so I think it generally will be you know a much more open collegiate consensual operation but I think you know everyone will feel that they can breathe a lot more easily say what they want to say don't think they're going to be you know hounded out by the whips or the you know or the governance unit in in the Labour Party as people like me and many you know thousands of people were you know have been thrown out so yeah I think it will be a lot different and really welcome really welcome if you were Nigel Farage watching that speech wouldn't give you that much to go at would it?

23:18I don't think it does really and I think you know Burnham does sort of a Heineken you know advert of the past it reaches the parts that other politicians can't reach in the sense that he does win over Tories and and reform voters and we saw that in Makerfield five percent of reform voters and eight percent of Tory voters but he really reaches into you know the lost voters to the Greens you know and the Liberal Democrats. Yeah the Greens were nowhere in Makerfield. No and And that isn't a slight on the Greens, who did fantastically well in Gorton and Denton, you know, and they hoovered up the Labour vote there, which is interesting about where the progressive electorate is.

23:54They'll get behind who they think is the best placed progressive party, you know, to win. And that makes the next election incredibly dynamic, incredibly unknowable in terms of where things go. And I, you know, with my compass hat on, you know, where for pluralism, where for learning, there's, you know, there's got to be a place for Green politics, there's got to be a place for liberal democrat politics as well as labour and hopefully we're not going to return to the singular big tent where everyone's forced into one place we want a campsite of progressive tents you know where people can work together but maintain their identity and i think that reflects the nature of the country now you know you don't have to win by just attracting centre-right voters if you can maximise the progressive vote then you can win on a progressive mandate and promise more aggressive things to give him the 10 years he's asked for to change our country right he's asked for 10 years he's got at best three if he holds his nerve and doesn't call an early general election we know voters are very impatient and also voters are really feeling the pinch the cost of living people are really struggling at the moment yeah do you think that they're going to give him the time that he needs because not much of this can be done quickly he might be able to replicate two pound bus fares across the country or something like that but beyond that i think i look i think it's i think it's really precarious i think you know what what burnham has done is kind of by a sort of minor miracle uh is reach base camp you know and now there's the mountain to client you know and now he's got to show a difference quickly he's got to set in place a you know a whole load of plans that he can go to the electorate whenever he calls an election so a big offer on pr a big offer on social care maybe a big offer on a wealth tax or you know whatever else it could be with the promise of you know systemic change and nothing less will do because going back to knocking on doors in makerfield this was we're not voting labour we'll vote andy this time because it was you know very local they knew him from his mayorship but it's it is the last chance saloon and if he doesn't offer change and doesn't deliver on that then when the labour party is not going to get another chance high stakes neil thank you very much my pleasure that was neil lawson from Compass and Mainstream.

26:02You can read all of our coverage of the Prime Minister in waiting at theguardian.com. And we on the show, of course, will be covering his premiership very closely. If you have a burning question about Andy Burnham and his pledge to rewire Britain from Manchester, email us at todayinfocusattheguardian.com. We will try to answer as many questions as possible in future episodes. And that is all for today. This episode was produced by Ivor Manley, Sundar Sabdi and Hannah Williams and presented by me, Helen Pidd. Sound design was by Brian McNamara and the executive producer was Hummer Khalili. We'll be back in your feeds this afternoon with the latest.

26:44This is The Guardian.