Earlier this week, Prime Minister-in-waiting Andy Burnham announced his ambitious plans for devolution across England — in addition to extending devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Included in the plans was a proposal for a “No. 10 in the North”, to be based in Manchester, which would serve as “the nerve centre of a rewired Britain”.

While the announcement was light on detail, it did address an important issue that previous governments have attempted to tackle. Despite the so-called “Northern Powerhouse”, coined by former chancellor George Osborne — and later “Levelling Up”, a key tenet of Boris Johnson’s 2019 general election campaign — the UK remains one of the most centralised developed economies in the world.

Based on this week’s speech, there is a risk that Burnham is repeating the same mistakes as his predecessors: politics first, industry second. To avoid this problem, he should look to Europe.

Take Hamburg and Toulouse, major cities in somewhat comparable national economies. Both function as the unquestioned economic centre of their own region, with distinct industries. That is not simply because Germany is a federal state or because France has devolved more powers to its regions. In fact, the comparison is instructive precisely because the two countries have taken such different constitutional paths.

Germany’s federal structure has long encouraged regional centres of power. Hamburg, home to one of Europe’s largest ports, has built an economy around logistics and advanced manufacturing. It is politically influential because it is economically important. Germany’s second-most populous city, it boasts a GDP per capita of around £72,000 — a stark contrast to the second-largest city in Britain, Birmingham, which can only manage £33,000 per capita.

France, a bit like Britain, remains one of Europe’s more centralised states. Yet Toulouse demonstrates that constitutional centralisation need not prevent regional prosperity. Over several decades, successive governments nurtured an aerospace ecosystem centred on Airbus. The wider Occitanie region is now home to more than 80,000 aerospace jobs, and Toulouse has become an engine of the French economy.

Compare this with Britain. Successive UK governments have treated devolution primarily as a constitutional exercise, creating metro mayors and moving civil servants to places such as Darlington with little meaningful success.

This is where Burnham’s plans will ultimately succeed or fail. Unless Manchester and Britain’s other great cities develop economically, the reforms announced this week risk becoming little more than another iteration of past proposals.

That is, admittedly, easier said than done. Germany and France have benefitted from decades of relatively cheap capital within the eurozone and the wider financial architecture surrounding the European Central Bank, making long-term infrastructure investment more financially sustainable. Britain also operates under different constraints and with increasing borrowing costs, raising difficult questions about how Burnham intends to finance the industrial strategy needed to genuinely rebalance the country.

However, recognising these constraints is not a sign that Britain will forever stay behind its European rivals, but should instead serve as a warning to focus policymakers’ minds. Rather than viewing devolution as an end in itself, Burnham should see it as one component of a broader economic strategy focused on creating cities that are genuinely economically indispensable in their own right. That also means facilitating broader economic conditions — such as reducing commercial energy costs — that enable long-term growth.

Burnham’s speech was encouraging, and he is right that Britain’s politics has become excessively concentrated in London. He was right, too, to argue that communities outside Westminster deserve greater autonomy. But Europe’s most successful regional cities, and Britain’s own failures, suggest that this cannot be done by nominally moving political power around the country. Without a strong national economy, constitutional devolution risks becoming a sticking plaster applied to a much deeper political wound.

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Thomas Munson is a freelance writer and political commentator. He spent six years working in foreign policy and in government.

TWMunson

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