Andy Burnham’s idea that if the government delegates more money and power to regional Mayors the North will be transformed is a nonsense.
His actions in Manchester did lend large sums to developers to build high rise blocks of flats in the centre to sell to the better off. He was criticised for not building more social housing and for working with a few rich entrepreneurs who got richer. There was no great strategy to bring industry back to the once thriving cotton City, no new successful initiatives for training and better paid employment for the young people of Manchester.
In a debate I had on LBC yesterday morning I pointed out that a large chunk of the railway/ transport budget went on HS 2 but resulted in the railway never reaching Manchester and Leeds as originally planned. This Labour government has no intent to restore the whole original point of the project, better North-south links. The absurd latest planned spend of up to £102 bn swamps transport budgets and kills off plenty of cheaper better projects.
If he delegates benefit money and spend to Councils will there still be national rates and national policies? What incentives will there be for Mayors to get more people into work, and to make work more worthwhile?
If we are to start to grow as fast as the US it will take lower taxes and a pro enterprise and investment national policy. Letting Mayors borrow and spend more will not deliver the more prosperous private sector or industrial revival we need.
June 28, 2026
If Burnham sticks to the Ed Miliband rip off energy sanity, Kier’s Open Borders to low skilled and illegal immigration policies, his two tier zero deterrent justice system and his tax and regulate to death policies he and the UK will remain in Starmer and Reeve’s disastrous doom loop.
The last people we want deciding on “investments” is politicians and the state sector. Not their money nor they who benefit (unless they are corrupt or buying votes). So they care not what they pay nor what value they get. As we saw with HS2, the Covid “vaccines” and lockdowns, defence procurement, benefit levels…
June 28, 2026
“If we are to start to grow as fast as the US it will take lower taxes and a pro enterprise and investment, national policy.”
We currently have a hugely anti-enterprise and investment agenda. Hugely over taxed, over regulated, endless rigged markets (healthcare, schools, energy, banking, transport, employments, housing…and a mad rip off, intermittent energy policy with energy up to 5 times US prices.
Burnham needs to decide if he will stick with the Ed Miliband, Reeves, Lammy, Starmer and Phillipson lunacy or move toward sensible policies.
Phillipson has stated that if being a “spiteful class warrior” meant helping lift half a million children out of poverty and championing state education, she would wear the label with pride.
She has not lifted any children out of poverty and championing state education and making people pay four times over private education is market rigging and pure evil. Claiming the private schools were getting a tax advantage over state schools is clearly a blatant lie.
Perhaps Bridget is not spiteful in which case she must be extremely dim and totally deluded as to the effects of these evil policies. They will not even raise any net tax and will over load the state sector.
June 28, 2026
Good Morning My Lord,
It seems to me that, everything I have heard from Mr Burnham, will just make the nation poorer and more divided.
I suspect that we already pay a greater percentage of the tax take in the South East compared to the north of the country and therefore, already subsidise the north of the country. Forcing us to pay even more tax to send up North, will breed resentment.
More government is seldom the answer to any problem. I suspect we need the state to get out of the way and allow people to start businesses and to keep more of their own money.
In many ways, the Loddon Bridge Gyratory roundabout is a metaphor for the country and the government.
The traffic flows ok when the traffic lights are working and controlling the flow but, when the lights aren’t working, the traffic seems to flow better with less congestion. Perhaps I am just daft but, although there is a little more risk without the lights, the overall outcome is often better.
Reply Agreed. Roundabouts are better than traffic lights. Traffic lights on roundabouts dominate and hold us up.
June 28, 2026
Manchesterism sounds like Townhallism. It’s hardly likely to free up the nation’s entrepreneurs and businesspeople from the yoke of heavy taxation and regulation that supresses real wealth creation and innovation. It sounds more like a recipe for increased corruption, nepotism and vote rigging.