Can Andy Burnham survive the pressure of Westminster?

Burnhamism, as a field of academic research, appears to be in a state of disarray. Those of us who study Andy Burnham have to admit collectively that we do not know some very basic things about Burnhamism, things so basic that the knowledge of them is usually taken for granted by scholars dealing with other texts.

These words – or a version of them, without the references to Manchester’s mayor – were actually written about the state of Koranic studies by Fred Donner, a scholar of early Islam. But they apply equally to the mess the media has got itself into in trying to define the political programme of a politician who, I can assure you, having covered his mayoralty for six years, does not have one.

This does not mean Burnham is a bad politician, or that he’s some kind of fraud. In fact, I think he’s an unusual talent who has fashioned a form of leadership in Greater Manchester that is unique in modern politics. But given that – if he wins the Makerfield by-election – he could be on a path to becoming prime minister, it’s worth us understanding what it is we’re getting with Burnham, and what we’re not.

In his interview with the New Statesman last September, Burnham defined his approach as “Manchesterism”, a term he now employs frequently. If you’ve noticed him looking a bit lost as he tries to define it, that’s because the new creed contains some clear contradictions.

The most obvious is that Burnham isn’t instinctively aligned with the thinking behind Manchester’s economic success. Richard Leese and Howard Bernstein, who ran the city’s council for decades, were hard-nosed pragmatists who were willing to do virtually anything to lure investment into the city, including giving away chunks of public land to developers. They had a vision for a modern services-led “knowledge economy”, heavily focused on the regional centre – Manchester and bits of Salford and Trafford – and anchored by the largest university campus in the UK.

Burnham, his advisers told me, was more interested in the city’s peripheries and the “left behind” communities that voted for Brexit. He felt they needed to be better connected to the urban core and would benefit from re-industrialisation, a theme he has returned to recently. But this approach is very different from Manchesterism. In fact, it’s almost a reaction to it. When I heard Burnham in an interview using Manchesterism in the same sentence as concerns about housing developments in Makerfield, I realised the term had lost all currency.

Burnham is fundamentally an instinctive politician. He’s good at spotting openings to make a point or get something changed, and effective at getting different agencies on board. This is built on another great skill: he listens. He uses his weekly radio show and his encounters with the public to discover what people care about. Above all, I see him as a more emotional politician than we are used to: in key moments, such as the pandemic and the Manchester Arena bombing, he has embodied the pain and anxiety of a city.

What I don’t think we should expect from him is a coherent programme. He isn’t Ed Miliband. He hasn’t spent years developing an approach to politics. Instead, he has core values – such as removing obstacles from people’s lives – and he looks for ways he can use his limited powers as mayor to achieve them. What happens when you apply that approach to running the country? Can a politician who is more flexible and instinctive than most – and who has a natural need to please people – get things done in the harsher, more scrutinised environment of Westminster?

The fountainhead for Manchesterism is the Bee Network, the result of Burnham’s years-long push to bring Greater Manchester’s buses under public control, ending decades of deregulated chaos and creating a London-style franchise system. Burnham sold the policy effectively and used it to build public support.

Regulating Manchester’s buses was technically difficult but politically easy: no one was sad that Stagecoach might make a bit less money. The question is whether Burnham can take on and win more difficult fights. His abandonment in 2022 of a proposed Clean Air Zone – which had been mandated by the Conservative government but designed by Burnham’s team – either suggested a political savviness or weakness in the face of public pressure.

The most interesting test, should Burnham enter No 10, will be devolution. This isn’t exactly a distinctive idea but it is a policy he has promoted consistently as mayor: that Britain would work better if more power was devolved to regions like Greater Manchester. There is a lot that is dysfunctional about the central British state, and there’s a strong argument that if you want to shake things up and get the economy moving, you have to loosen Whitehall’s grip on the country. Burnham believes this because he’s seen it work. But to make devolution work on a broader scale, he would need to stick with it despite the inevitable vicious off-the-record briefings and the heat from various lobby groups.

Rather than focusing too much on the hunt for a Manchesterism or Burnhamism, it might make more sense to ask whether Andy Burnham can sell and stick with the one idea that has defined his rise, and that, if it takes him to the doorstep of No 10, could genuinely transform the country.

Joshi Herrmann is the founder of Mill Media and is based in Manchester

[Further reading: What Britain won’t face]