How the pandemic empowered England’s metro mayors

England needed a “Boris of the North,” declared a report in 2014 by the Institute for Public Policy, a progressive think tank which today might think twice about proposing to add more Boris Johnson’s to the political landscape. The idea behind the catchphrase was that the northern regions needed strong leaders to champion economic growth – people who could use their personal charisma and networks to lobby central government for more funds, as Boris Johnson had done in London, and utilise a broad range of executive powers to spend the money in the most effective way.

The proposal came as the then Chancellor, George Osborne, was looking for new ways to invigorate the regions under his plan for a ‘Northern Powerhouse’. He had already been thinking deeply about city regions and devolution. A plan to combine the two via devolution settlements for city regions, overseen by directly-elected politicians, was always going to entice him, and thus the skeleton of a strategy emerged in the 2015 Conservative manifesto.

“We will devolve far-reaching powers over economic development, transport and social care to large cities which choose to have elected mayors,” the manifesto stated. To prove the effectiveness of devolution, a Conservative government would make an example of the Greater Manchester region: “We will legislate to deliver an historic deal for Greater Manchester, which will devolve powers and budgets and lead to the creation of a directly elected Mayor for Greater Manchester.”

Promised in the middle of a heated campaign, and displayed on the same pages as the pledge to hold a referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union, Osborne’s devolution offer drew little attention at the time. Yet it was truly historic. Westminster, the home of one of the most centralised governments in the OECD would conduct the most rapid devolution of powers to English regions in centuries.

By 2017, the Boris of the North had come to fruition. He had a different style of politics to London’s blonde bombshell, and perhaps a less bombastic demeanour, but Andy Burnham brought the political clout of a Westminster big-hitter to Manchester. He had previously served as Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Culture Secretary and Health Secretary in Gordon Brown’s government.

It seemed a bizarre move for a senior national politician – in Europe and the United States, a mayoralty is considered a step towards national politics, rather than the other way around. Burnham was still a rising star in the national Labour Party, having come second to Jeremy Corbyn in the party’s 2015 leadership election.

Many in Labour considered his move to Manchester to be the end of his career in frontline politics and a route to quiet retirement. “We all thought he’d had it because of Corbyn. He was the frontrunner and then an unknown crank won. It was demoralising. Leaving frontline politics made sense. I thought, ‘good game’,” said a regional organiser at Labour HQ.

That assumption proved to be misguided. Rather than seeking a lesser role in politics, Burnham had grasped the sheer scale of the executive powers on offer, which would give him much more influence than any position in the Shadow Cabinet. You might go as far to say that Burnham is better known on the national stage than Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader,

As Mayor of Greater Manchester, he would preside over a £6bn integrated health and social care budget, a £900m investment fund, a £243m transforming cities fund, and a £30m a year housing investment fund, strategic land commission planning, compulsory purchase powers, mayoral development corporations, a local industrial strategy, a consolidated transport budget, and the local roads network.

“I was wrong, obviously. It wasn’t a downgrade,” added the senior Labour organiser. “Burnham is the First Minister of the North.”

Other mayoralties attracted similarly powerful personalities. Andy Street, who as managing director of John Lewis oversaw a 50% increase in gross sales to over £4.4billion, left his lucrative corporate position to become the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands. With similar powers to Burnham, he has quickly become a star in the Conservative party and frequently takes key speaking slots at party conferences.

Both men entered office with ambitious plans that have, in the wake of the coronavirus epidemic, been delayed until their possible re-election in 2021. The mayors now find themselves leading the charge against the virus in areas that have some of the highest population densities in England – a key metric in evaluating how severe a virus outbreak could become. The already-high burden of responsibility on the mayors continues to increase as faith in Boris Johnson’ government deteriorates.

In recent weeks, councils in Manchester and Birmingham have looked to Burnham and Street for answers, and have found in the mayoral offices a surprising willingness to lead.

Burnham has been particularly assertive, coalescing Greater Manchester’s council leaders around his office, Broadhurst House, to speak for the entire region with a single voice. This has given Burnham the authority to block emergency coronavirus diktats from Westminster, such as a plan last weekend to place Manchester under Tier 3 restrictions.

Last weekend, Burnham insisted that without extra funding for Manchester’s hospitality industry and increased subsidies for workers’ wages, he would not agree to the Tier 3 plan, forcing Downing Street to reluctantly back down and removed Greater Manchester from the red list. Number 10 could have ultimately forced its will upon the mayor but, in an indication of Burnham’s influence, opted not to.

One Labour regional organiser told Reaction that Downing Street had tried to circumvent Burnham by attempting to negotiate with Manchester’s (predominantly Labour) MPs instead, but that the plan had failed. “The MPs came to Andy for lines to take and gave [Downing Street Chief of Staff] Eddie Lister the exact same response,” the organiser said.

Now, Burnham has declared his intention to “stand firm” against renewed efforts from Westminster to introduce tighter restrictions in the area without adequate compensation.

With negotiations between Number 10 and Burnham ongoing, the mayor yesterday afternoon held a defiant press conference. “They are asking us to gamble our residents’ jobs, homes and businesses, and a large chunk of our economy, on a strategy that their own experts tell them might not work. We would never sign up for that,” he told an assembly of cameras outside his office. “This is an important moment. Greater Manchester will stand firm. We are fighting back for fairness and for the health of our people, in the broadest sense.”

It was an important moment for Burnham himself, and some would argue for the institution of metro mayors. In a demonstration of just how much political capital the Broadhurst House has amassed, half a dozen national political correspondents had trekked to a northern city to report on an angry mayor complaining about a lack of government funding.

Burnham’s hostile tone to central government has not come without criticism, however. Critics have noted that he appears to be enjoying the media circus, while not producing his own answers for the question of how to quell the spike in coronavirus cases in his region. The mayor has also suggested he would support a full lockdown on Manchester if government support is provided, which rather contradicts his calls for a quick economic recovery.

Standing before the cameras in dressed-down anorak, he was “trying to be Noel Gallagher,” said a former Westminster lobby reporter who covered Burnham. “He’s a shapeshifter, he always has been. He sort of adopts… he’s a young ultra-Blairite who gives them credibility because he’s from the north, and then he became an anti-Blairite” when Blairism went off-fashion and moved to the Brownites.

Most cleverly of all, he has now created his own Burnhamites in the Greater Manchester region, and beyond. He’s presenting himself as the new Angel of the North hero for our times, shaking his fist down the M6 corridor at his blonde rival down south.  You might go as far to say that Burnham now has a higher profile on the national stage than Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader. As the reporter added: “But Burnham has got to be careful he doesn’t overdo this Northern angry stuff. He could run out of steam and end up looking rather silly if he loses out. ”

Yet more toxic for the Conservative government is the fact that a similar rebellion is taking hold in the West Midlands, where Conservative mayor Andy Street’s relationship with Downing Street has deteriorated.

Reaction has been told that in previous weeks Street has worked constructively with central government, holding weekly phone calls with Health Secretary Matt Hancock and being consulted on restrictions. Street’s relationship with central government was so positive that the ministers were using him as a conveyor to other metro mayors.

Street was said to be indignant, however, when Tier 2 coronavirus restrictions were announced for Birmingham on Monday without his knowledge.

“The decision to place the West Midlands into the ‘high’ alert level will critically affect businesses in the hospitality sector,” Street wrote to Downing Street on Tuesday. “Under these new restrictions, many businesses will struggle to cover the costs and will have to resort to redundancies. This could amount to a closure by default, if not by law. This risks an avoidable domino-effect across local economies.”

Street’s uncharacteristic, colourful intervention will make Downing Street think twice about increasing Birmingham’s restrictions in future, and his calls for more financial support will be received as a more credible plea by Conservative MPs. “He wasn’t as forceful as Andy [Burnham], but then again he has private channels to make his case, and he’s probably doing that quite effectively at the moment,” another Labour observer predicted.

The focus by both Burnham and Street on their regional economies is a reminder that, in some ways, the Osborne dream of the regional mayoral system incentivising free market economic competition has come to fruition – although perhaps not quite in the way that he would have envisaged. The powers available to metro mayors, which almost entirely focus on supply-side economic reform, have indeed encouraged them to focus on promoting change in England’s regional economies.

While the government again considers shutting down large swathes of the economy, Burnham and Street are – at least rhetorically – more concerned about kickstarting local economic recoveries. Supporters of Osborne say this distinction proves his theory that decentralising power is the key to unlocking economic productivity. Others might see it in another way, as a part of a wider transformation of English democracy that is now unfolding during the coronavirus crisis.

Osborne’s devolution project is already having unintended consequences for the national political parties, who now face the challenge of regional political hubs taking on the hegemony of Westminster whips. Metro mayors have shown in this crisis an ability to form political networks independent of Westminster whips, allowing them to form semi-autonomous caucuses within the national parties.

One regional Labour aide compared the development to the breakup of the Union. “Just as the Scottish executive has politically broken the Union, the regional executives will break up England. Andy (Burnham) is already building a fiefdom in Manchester. (Andy Street) is mellow, but whichever Tory comes after him will be power-hungry and ambitious, especially when they see what Andy is doing.”

“You’re going to see a more lively body politic. They [the mayors] are going to build up regional cultures as a political weapon. You’re going to see citizens take more pride in their region. Westminster people will be forced to prove their regionalism,” he added.

Other optimistic observers believe metro mayors could also have a positive impact on the Union. Weakening English political hegemony also weakens a key nationalist argument north of the border in Scotland. Strong Labour mayors could act as a counterweight to the perception in Scotland that England is a pitiful Conservative stronghold, and their ability to extract concessions from Westminster might prove to Scottish voters the value of a local executive focused on economic, rather than constitutional, issues – and on harnessing local decision-making power rather than agitating for national independence.

Scottish nationalists often point to Londoners as the people with whom they share many political beliefs. What if they could just as easily point to Mancunians, Liverpudlians and Brummies as their political models, even allies, too?

In the long run, regional devolution may even be the beginning of a move towards a federal political system, such as that advocated by the Constitution Reform Group. One of the main arguments against federalism is that the population and economic imbalance between the four home nations would require to break itself up – and that the English wouldn’t accept such a compromise.

It now appears that England is voluntarily embracing regionalism and blazing the way towards a new political settlement.

The new metro-mayoralty system is not perfect – there needs to be further clarity on the distinction of powers between the mayors and local council leaders, and the public is still relatively unaware of the new institution – but the coronavirus crisis has proven the sheer effectiveness of the positions in promoting local economic interests.

This may yet prove to be George Osborne’s greatest legacy. Who knows, the former Chancellor might one day become a mayor himself. An interesting question to ask is: why did Osborne not throw himself into the ring as a candidate for the role of London Mayor earlier this year, when there were behind the scenes attempts to bring in a big-hitter to replace the current Tory candidate, Shaun Bailey?