Andy Burnham’s Plan for Britain Starts Above a Manchester Cocktail Bar

<!–> –> Andy Burnham's Plan for Britain Starts Above a Manchester Cocktail Bar A look at Andy Burnham's new office No.

Key points

• It has billowed by 100, 000 residents in six years to around 550, 000 after the Covid pandemic and Brexit.
• "The conversation is completely different from what it was, " remarked Greg Clark, the Conservative minister for decentralization under Cameron in the early 2010s.
• Prime Minister Andy Burnham steps outside Heron House in central Manchester, home to his new No.
• 10 North is more than Burnham's own Manc-a-Lago, where he retreats ahead of weekends at his family home nearby.
• A few days before he took power, Burnham and the civil service agreed on a temporary solution: Heron House, a red-brick office block that was renovated in 2019.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham steps outside Heron House in central Manchester, home to his new "No. 10 North, " after a session. Burnham has pledged to work from the northern outpost each week as part of his push to shift political power away from London. Ryan Jenkinson/Getty Images.

MANCHESTER, England – On the day in June that Andy Burnham concluded his nine-year term as mayor, Manchester's authorities sent him off with a parting gift: a wingback chair whose shiny fabric was printed with the city's trademark worker-bee symbol and its rallying cry "we do things differently here."

One month afterwards, Burnham moved to 10 Downing Street, the sprawling Georgian terrace in London replete with mice, net curtains, cranky heating and patchy phone signal from which six other prime ministers have struggled to run Britain in the last decade. But the worker-bee chair did not accompany him on the trip south. It moved just a half-mile, through a city that was once the engine of the industrial revolution but for more than a century has struggled for balance against the political, economic and military power consolidated in the capital.

Meanwhile, the chair now sits beside a 10-seat conference table in what Burnham calls "No. 10 North, " a refurbished 1980s office block he has chosen as his auxiliary seat of power. What remains of the largest empire the world has known is now governed most Fridays from above a discount cocktail bar, where Burnham has replaced Downing Street's concentric rooms of gatekeepers with clinically lit floors of open-plan desks. Staffed by a number of political allies from his time in Greater Manchester and decorated with a gold record of The Queen Is Dead, the 1986 album by Manchester band The Smiths, it is Burnham's "comfort zone, " a person who has worked with him stated – "an homage to his time" as mayor.

No. 10 North is more than Burnham's own Manc-a-Lago, where he retreats ahead of weekends at his family home nearby. The prime minister, who succeeded Keir Starmer as the benefactor of a Labour Party putsch on July 20, has created it a central aim of his premiership to move power and capital out from limestone buildings on Whitehall, the old heart of London's civil service – by centralizing some of Whitehall's power further in No. 10 North, and handing other parts of it to local leaders outside administration. He is banking Labour's political future, and that of the British center-left, on being able to reverse a decades-long decline of England's former industrial heartlands, one that fueled a political polarization and drove the 2016 vote for Brexit.

"What we're bringing is a different type of energy, " Caroline Simpson, the mayoral authority's former chief executive whom Burnham has tasked with heading up his new northern outpost as deputy chief of staff, informed POLITICO Magazine in her first interview since assuming the role. "That's really the point regarding No. 10 North – to connect our places, connect devolution back into the heart of governing."

Burnham's political opponents – and, privately, some civil servants. This person have seen past prime ministers try to move power out of London – have derided the Manchester office as a gimmick, a soundstage for a politician attuned more to optics than policy detail. (No. 10 North is "absolutely not" a gimmick, insists Simpson.) The office is already up and running, but some of the basic details of how it will geographically redistribute power – such as how funding or boundaries will be configured – have not been worked out. An early test of Burnham's commitment to redistributing his government's sparse finances will come on Oct. 28, the day of his first budget, and in a cross-government spending review in 2027.

POLITICO Magazine spoke to 28 current or former civil servants, political authorities, regional office-holders, advisers and politicians to illuminate what life is like inside No. 10 North and the broader policy vision it reflects. Plenty of were granted anonymity to speak frankly concerning the workings of Burnham's administration. Downing Street declined to comment on the specifics of this article, beyond making Simpson available for interview.

Burnham took office on a pledge to "rewire Britain." He has to rewire the house first.

Notably, the incoming prime minister discussed the idea of setting up No. 10 North with his closest aides ahead of the June special election that sent him back to Westminster, a person with knowledge of the conversations remarked.

But the idea was kept secret from all but his innermost team until Burnham confirmed it in late June. He did not even tell Simpson regarding it in advance. "It all happened very, very quickly, " she remarked.

After winning the June special election, Burnham scrambled to create No. 10 North a reality. He wanted to put it in Manchester – but where, exactly, wasn't clear. He informed an interviewer in early July that his preferred site was the planned Manchester Digital Campus in the Ancoats area of the city, but the site he named will only open fully in 2032. Burnham's team looked at options for other administration buildings in Manchester during a few frantic weeks of transition negotiations with the civil service.

Notably, a few days before he took power, Burnham and the civil service agreed on a temporary solution: Heron House, a red-brick office block that was renovated in 2019. No. 10 North occupies a floor that had been prepared for employ by GCHQ, the U.K.'s intelligence and cyber-security agency. GCHQ was happy to vacate the floor; one senior administration official stated the agency was "bending over backwards to be helpful, " since it still has senior figures in other parts of the building who will find it useful to be near the PM. Less happy regarding the arrangement: Greater Manchester Police. It has been under more strain thanks to the burden of protecting the PM and building. It had an initial back-and-forth with London's Metropolitan Police regarding when each force should be responsible for Burnham's security, a person with knowledge of the negotiations noted, and has triggered concern concerning who will pay the long-term bill. A Greater Manchester Police spokesperson remarked the force was still working with administration departments on security arrangements and "the cost of this is yet to be determined."

There was a recent model for moving a core administration function from Westminster to the north, and Burnham's team is relying on some of that expertise. Former PM Boris Johnson opened administration offices outside London including the Treasury. It rolled out a campus in the north-eastern railway town of Darlington, conveniently near then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak's sizeable family home in North Yorkshire.

Beth Russell, the senior official who leads the Darlington campus, has been advising on the setup of No. 10 North. But the projects are not the same; Darlington has around 350 Treasury civil servants throughout all ranks (plus more from eight other departments) while No. 10 North at present has only 50 or so, numerous of them necessarily senior. That means Darlington's boasts to have recruited 80 percent of its staff locally, including from nearby schools, are unlikely to be repeated in No. 10 North.

Since they live outside London, heather Scott, the veteran Conservative who was leader of Darlington Council at the time, argued local recruitment had created the project a success; some young residents "never thought that they would have an opportunity to work for a government office." Local staff may additionally think (and therefore produce policy) differently. "They're not in £5 Gail's coffee world, " remarked one Labour official, referring to a high-end chain bakery.

Burnham has, though, poached plenty of members of his old mayoral team to No. 10 North – some of them based fully in Manchester and others splitting their time between there and London. Simpson will be a political special adviser while others will be non-partisan civil servants including John Wrathmell. This person influenced thinking on "Manchesterism, " Burnham's vision of putting the needs of a place above political ideology by combining private investment with state intervention. They were joined in recent weeks by Amy Davies. This person ran Burnham's calendar as mayor; she has been given the job of executive assistant to the PM, according to two individuals with knowledge of the appointment. (No. 10 does not routinely comment on staffing matters.) Other civil servants who join No. 10 North will already have been based outside London or want to return to where they grew up.

But in the meantime, civil servants have descended on Manchester from afar. No. 10 North's Director General Sam Lister – its most senior civil servant – was only appointed on the Friday before Heron House opened to staff the after Monday, July 20 – the day Burnham took power, two residents with knowledge of the process noted. Lister declined to comment for this article (civil servants are ordinarily barred from speaking in public). Department heads were asked to suggest staff who might transfer to No. 10 North less than a week before it opened. One senior Whitehall official described the process as a "tap on the shoulder" and remarked the method for choosing residents had been "unclear."

Plenty of of the 50 or so civil servants at present in No. 10 North are still based outside Manchester – which is 180 miles from London – and living in hotels for part of the week. That includes Lister, whose commute from his north London home was photographed covertly by the Mail on Sunday. After the story broke, authorities were advised to stay throughout a variety of hotels to keep a lower profile, an official with knowledge of the process noted.

Civil servants assigned to work at No. 10 North have been turning up before 8 a.m. On Fridays to secure desks that Burnham will walk past. Some ministers hot-desk. Simpson has her own office, there is a suite for ministerial employ and office-holders are "buying the nicer furniture that comes with being the center of government, " the same official with knowledge of the process noted.

Cheerleaders for the No. 10 North agenda argue this rush to action demonstrates the team is trying to do something that British governments seldom manage – behave like a start-up. Lister wrote on LinkedIn that the unit "must maintain an agile, scale-up, non-hierarchical mindset" to work, "solving problems in real time rather than waiting for perfect answers."

Therefore authorities are anxious not to appoint too numerous civil servants; a person with knowledge of the planning noted the total number of civil servants in No. 10 North is probable not to exceed 150, a tiny number compared to the thousands who already work in administration offices outside London.

Those who do move permanently will each be able to claim up to £14, 000 in relocation costs under existing rules, remarked the same official with knowledge of the process quoted above. They would not be projected to take a pay cut.

And then it may all churn again. Putting No. 10 North in Heron House is still only a medium-term arrangement and is unlikely to last until the nearby digital campus is open in 2032, remarked the same person with knowledge of the planning quoted earlier. That means Burnham's team is looking at whether it can move somewhere else – neither Heron House nor the digital campus – in the coming years.

Burnham has pledged to work from the office every week, mostly on Fridays. (Burnham's advisers say he will have visited five times in the month since becoming prime minister.) Despite his love of casual clothes, some of the trappings of his office follow him around. Downing Street sent its front-of-house staff up north with Burnham during his visits; aides suddenly discovered themselves being waited on with cups of tea.

In recent weeks the Manchester base has become such a focus of conversation that Burnham insiders have begun referring to London's most famous street address as "No. 10 South." Those who work there now find themselves on the receiving end of the north-south insecurity. One Labour official retorted: "No, we are No. 10!"

Downing Street and the surrounding streets still hoard the vast bulk of state power; the old Georgian building is the one with the famous black door and Larry the Cat, the feline who has lived at No. 10 longer than a number of prime ministers. No. 10 North has no real cat, remarked Simpson – but it does boast a cardboard cutout of Larry.

"Our building at the moment is tricky, " Simpson explained. Unlike Downing Street, where Larry can come and go as he pleases, Heron House has security keypads that cannot be operated by paws. <!–> All roads lead from London.

Burnham is far from the first British PM to try to break London's hold on Britain – the result of a highly centralized administration, based in a city of global finance and tourism that is more than three times the size of its nearest U.K. Rival.

London was always the seat of Britain's establishment, but northern cities – as the seat of the industrial revolution – once held a power of their own. The first steam train ran through Darlington; Manchester has a statue of Abraham Lincoln in honor of mill workers who refused to touch slave-picked cotton. (It is next to the back door of No. 10 North.).

"There was a time during which people in the north had a load of control, agency and power by virtue of being part of the industries that powered this country – by having powerful MPs, councils that were well-funded, community institutions and organizations that were coherent and well-embedded in their in their place, " remarked Oliver Coppard, the Labour mayor of South Yorkshire, a county west of Manchester that includes Sheffield. "Those things have all gone, or largely gone, and communities are fractured. So individuals don't have agency; they don't know who to reach out to secure things to change."

Thirty years ago the U.K. Had ceremonial mayors instead of empowered municipal ones, and no true parliaments for the nations outside England. Since then there has been an endless ratchet of pledges to move power outside Westminster. Labour's Tony Blair set up democratic bodies for Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and London, but kept centrally-run agencies for England's regional development (Simpson worked in one of them). Conservative David Cameron followed with his "northern powerhouse, " which offered some English cities mayors and funding deals. Boris Johnson, who built his profile as London's mayor, extended the model to rural areas, seizing on the regional divides that drove the 2016 Brexit vote with his promise to "level up" Britain.

Yet England is still "very centralized" compared to the U.S. And its system of federalism, argues Simpson: "We are one of the most centralized countries in the Western Hemisphere. We have particularly little true devolution." Henri Murison, director of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, a business lobby group, added: "Our country is basically designed so we only have a federal administration, we have no state administration."

And so Burnham, who decided in 2016 in a pub in Westminster that he would quit London, where he was serving in parliament and had previously been in cabinet, and run for mayoral office, now pledges to go further still. When he was infuriated by how the system worked in practice – or didn't, his plan is shaped by those nine years as mayor.

He has vowed to extend devolution to more areas of England and go beyond the traditional focus on economic investment, looking additionally at public services such as bus networks. He is planning to tidy up the messy patchwork of boundaries for police, health and fire services that he confronted in the role. He notes he will provide mayors more true economic freedom; they will be allowed to spend an allotment of national income tax, and commit to more expensive projects without national approval, giving them a predictable income stream rather than forcing them to chase new grants each year. Regional authorities will have less frenzied oversight from Whitehall. (One senior Labour figure in a mayoral authority joked that they had to tell the central administration how numerous thumb tacks they had purchased.).

"The conversation is completely different from what it was, " remarked Greg Clark, the Conservative minister for decentralization under Cameron in the early 2010s. In the early 2010s, he explained, "the direction was particularly much centralization. There was no real debate regarding devolution from the city deals onwards. These things have now become irreversible."

Burnham's policy vision is contained in a rare joint statement of his Cabinet on July 31, less than two weeks after he came to office. Thrashed out over pre-handover "access talks" between Burnham's top aides and Antonia Romeo, Britain's most senior civil servant, it remarked ministers had agreed to "the full shape" of how the government's structure will shift power away from London before the next election. The seven-page PDF is "what individuals in No. 10 are excited regarding, " stated Murison. Burnham deliberately imposed his end point without a detailed plan instead of letting Whitehall pore over drafts; one ally remarked it was to avoid his aims being "sanitized." Romeo sees it as a foundational document too; she believes she could become the cabinet secretary who presided over the greatest change to the state in decades. Authorities are now in what they privately call a 100-day sprint to produce a detailed policy paper in the fall that will set out more concerning how Burnham intends to actually implement the vision.

In their old jobs in the mayoral authority or elsewhere in Whitehall, No. 10 North aides had already looked to Germany and France for inspiration, including on the countries' regional approaches to industrial strategy. Senior authorities have additionally asked the BBC for advice after the national broadcaster relocated a number of operations to Salford – a district of Greater Manchester – in 2011. "The BBC didn't just land as an island, " remarked Simpson. "The BBC created a whole creative sector around it."

They may need the advice. The Cabinet document promises a "major transfer of powers, resources and functions" from central administration to mayors and councils; that signals that Burnham intends to shrink Britain's national civil service. It has billowed by 100, 000 residents in six years to around 550, 000 after the Covid pandemic and Brexit. That will be "uncomfortable, " admitted the person with knowledge of the planning quoted earlier.

Taken together, the developments around andy Burnham's Plan for Britain Starts Above a Manchester Cocktail Bar point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.