Prime Minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham has given his first major speech since returning to Parliament, seeking to lay out his vision for Britain. At the heart of the speech was a plea for a different political culture led by devolution to overturn the “broken” Westminster system. Yet, in many ways, Burnham’s speech was just another example of the small-mindedness of Westminster politics. Giving the illusion of action without actually doing anything at all, his solutions obsess over the structures and process of political decision-making, rather than the substance.

The crescendo of the speech was a plea to address the shocking findings of Alan Milburn’s review into youth employment, which warns that the UK could see another quarter of a million young people out of work, education or training within five years. “Blame us, not them,” Burnham said today. He is right that blame lies with the political class, which has overseen the deindustrialization of Britain and forged an economy increasingly dependent on low-end service jobs that are low-productivity and lack decent career progression. But what is his solution?

In classic Westminster fashion, the answer is to shift responsibility to mayors and reform the “fragmentation” of the current provision of employment support. These proposals are not without merit. A more localized delivery model may help schemes to engage parts of the community that a traditional Jobcenter approach cannot. However, it does not address Britain’s 20-year economic failure to create decent, well-paid jobs across every part of the country.

Look across the Channel to Germany: youth unemployment has been lower there in recent years because of an active industrial policy backed by consistent investment. However, like Britain, Germany is suffering from the existential threat of Chinese production that has seen nearly 350,000 industrial jobs lost since the pandemic. Youth unemployment is now rising again, up from 6.9% in 2023 to 7.2% in April 2026. At the same time Burnham’s speech was being written, Volkswagen announced that up to 100,000 jobs could be cut from its global workforce, due to the pressure of US tariffs and Chinese competition. It remains to be seen how shifting the pieces on the board of Britain’s political system could alter these factors.

It is unclear, too, whether Burnham’s No.10 North proposal is a genuine attempt to devolve power from London or whether it will become another Darlington Economic Campus, a good press release but nothing more. Burnham’s first speech indicates that he is a master of the Westminster game, but the public are becoming better than ever at spotting a politician’s sleight of hand. No one will be thanking the new government for locating more civil servants in Manchester if industries are closing down.

Burnham still has time to level with voters about the scale of the challenge Britain faces and outline the trade-offs, particularly the need for more household saving and greater collective investment, to deal with Chinese industrial dominance. If he does not, then, like Starmer, he will find himself a prisoner of events and unable to connect with a public who can see the gathering economic storm. Burnham knows how that story ends.

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Andrew O’Brien is the former Director of Policy at the think tank Demos and currently Head of Secretariat of the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods. He writes in a personal capacity.

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