London, United Kingdom — On his fourth day as prime minister, Andy Burnham didn’t keep at Downing Avenue in London. Nor did he go to Manchester, the house of Number 10 North. He went to Glasgow.
Hours earlier than King Charles and Queen Camilla opened the 2026 Commonwealth Video games, Burnham held his first in-person conferences with Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney and Wales’ First Minister Rhun ap Iorwerth. The talks had been meant to exhibit, in Burnham’s personal phrases, that development is required “in each postcode throughout the entire of the UK”. A gathering with Northern Eire’s First and Deputy First Ministers, Michelle O’Neill and Emma Little-Pengelly, is pencilled in for a wider UK tour in August.
Notably absent from the agenda, at Burnham’s insistence, was any dialogue of a second Scottish independence referendum.
Simply days after being appointed prime minister, Burnham is testing a proposition that may outline his premiership. He’s promoting a imaginative and prescient that the workplace itself may be partly relocated out of London to Manchester, the town he ruled as mayor from 2017 till his return to UK Parliament within the Makerfield by-election final month.
What Quantity 10 North really is
Stripped of rhetoric, Quantity 10 North is a written ministerial assertion. On July 21, Baroness Smith of Basildon, Chief of the Home of Lords and Lord Privy Seal, confirmed on the federal government’s behalf that devolution and native development coverage capabilities are transferring out of the housing ministry and the Treasury and into a brand new Manchester-based operation. There, civil servants will work inside a restructured Workplace for the Prime Minister and the Cupboard, led by Cupboard Secretary Dame Antonia Romeo.
The interim headquarters is Heron Home, within the New Islington space of Manchester, chosen partly for its proximity to a deliberate Manchester Digital Campus.
Caroline Simpson, the outgoing chief government of the Higher Manchester Mixed Authority, has been named Burnham’s deputy chief of workers, and might be answerable for day-to-day workplace operations. Downing Avenue says Burnham himself expects to work from Manchester “a minimum of someday per week”, although officers warning his diary could change, and insists the association carries no extra price to taxpayers.
Burnham calls it “the nerve centre of a rewired Britain” and rejects recommendations it’s symbolic. “Not a gimmick,” he informed his first Cupboard assembly about Quantity 10 North.
Plumbing, however no water
Quantity 10 North “establishes the plumbing, however the water isn’t flowing but”, mentioned Mirte Boot of the Institute for Public Coverage Analysis (IPPR) North. The institutional structure is firming up, however fiscal devolution – ie, the switch of cash and tax-raising energy – that might make such a coverage significant doesn’t but exist, she added.
Nonetheless, she calls it “a step in the proper path” after what she describes as “an excessive amount of energy condensed into one postcode”. Leaving Westminster isn’t sufficient; Quantity 10 North will want “sturdy political management other than the prime minister”, she added.
The decision that Quantity 10 North comprises imaginative and prescient and ambition however at present lacks an in depth plan and supply mechanism is a recurring response from unbiased voices.
Jonathan Carr-West of the Native Authorities Data Unit calls Burnham’s devolution agenda “essentially the most formidable assertion … from a senior politician in a technology”, whereas warning that English councils are so financially hollowed out that the imaginative and prescient “requires a car” it doesn’t but have.
Malcolm Morgan, a transport researcher on the College of Leeds, places it extra bluntly: real devolution means spending, taxation and regulatory energy, not simply relocated capabilities, and “devolution doesn’t create extra funding”.
That funding query sits unresolved alongside the nationwide one. The 2026 English Devolution and Neighborhood Empowerment Act expanded mayors’ management over transport, planning and housing, however left fiscal devolution to a separate Treasury “roadmap” due alongside the autumn finances. Based on Centre for Cities, a UK city coverage assume tank, the UK stays essentially the most fiscally centralised nation within the G7: some 95 p.c of tax income flows straight to Whitehall.
Devolution, or recentralisation?
For Scotland’s SNP authorities, the Quantity 10 North framing is irrelevant. First Minister Swinney responded that “rhetoric alone is not going to lower it” and argued that 4 consecutive Holyrood elections have handed his social gathering a mandate for Scottish self-determination, one thing Westminster retains ignoring, he mentioned. In Glasgow, Burnham declined to interact with that argument straight.
In the meantime, Wales’ Ap Iorwerth struck a extra cooperative notice however nonetheless mentioned he anticipated “that Quantity 10 North wouldn’t change into Whitehall with a special postcode”.
He additionally used the assembly with Burnham to press for a brand new Wales Invoice granting policing and justice powers, and a alternative for the Barnett Method funding mechanism, which Westminster makes use of to calculate annual modifications to the block grants allotted to the UK’s devolved governments, so Wales would have funding parity with Scotland.
Reform UK’s Nigel Farage, from the alternative political path, warned {that a} Quantity 10 within the south and one within the north would merely “struggle towards one another”.
What it means in Manchester
In Bury, Higher Manchester, Scottish-born Debe Conway sells kids’s books at markets and has lived within the space for 56 years, however stays unconvinced in regards to the new prime minister.
Her largest concern is immigration, which she known as Burnham weak on. And as for Quantity 10 North, she desires to know the way it’s being paid for, and asks how lengthy it should final, contemplating that the UK has had seven prime ministers within the final 10 years.
Wealthy Carver, who has run pizza eating places in Manchester for 15 years and is at present “absorbing the vitality within the metropolis”, says he cares extra about what’s going to occur within the subsequent 10 years.
He’s additionally bored with the succession of governments and needs this one to final. He likes Burnham and is optimistic sufficient in regards to the metropolis’s trajectory that he’s opening a brand new restaurant within the coming weeks, one thing he wouldn’t have performed 5 years in the past.
“We’re all one nation,” he says, hoping the remainder of the UK (and the media) give the brand new prime minister time and the prospect to implement his imaginative and prescient. Whether or not that point produces development, or simply relocated workplaces, is the query Quantity 10 North nonetheless has to reply.
