George Pickering is a researcher at the think tank Bright Blue. He holds a doctorate in Economic History from the University of Oxford.
The recent setback to Andy Burnham’s parliamentary ambitions seems to have done little to diminish expectations that he could be the man to finally end the troubled premiership of Keir Starmer.
Even after having been blocked from running in the Gorton and Denton by-election, the Greater Manchester Mayor is still amongst the bookies’ favourites to become the next Labour leader. Indeed, his rejection of Starmer’s offer of a safe Labour seat in 2027 suggests that Burnham still expects to be able to return to Parliament and challenge Starmer long before the next general election.
Burnham offered some clues as to what his agenda as Prime Minister might be in a speech he recently delivered to the IFS and the UCL Policy Lab. There, Burnham appeared to lament Britain’s wince-making national debt, describing the country as “in hock to the bond markets.” This would all be very well if Burnham meant to tackle the debt by the obvious means of restraining government spending. However, proposing spending cuts in any area – except, perhaps, defence – would be unlikely to endear him to the Labour rank-and-file.
Instead, Burnham argued that Britain should follow the example of Manchester’s supposedly miraculous recent economic growth which he attributed to “roll[ing] back the 1980s and [taking] more local public control over the essential drivers of the economy, such as housing, utilities, transport and education.”
However, it is far from clear that “Manchesterism,” as Burnham has called his programme, would really be the miracle cure to Britain’s economic woes. For one thing, it seems probable that the official figures suggesting exceptional productivity growth in Manchester have overestimated the number of new professional jobs in the city, and fail to account for the city’s lack of wage growth, except amongst those benefitting from recent hikes in the minimum wage.
Burnham’s proposals also hardly seem novel enough to be considered their own distinctive programme deserving its own special soubriquet. It is difficult to imagine any centre-left figure who would not echo Burnham’s wearily predictable denouncement of austerity, Brexit, deregulation and privatisation as “the four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse.” Nor is it clear how increasing state control of housing, utilities, transport and education – hardly bastions of unregulated enterprise – would apply the needed smelling salts to Britain’s torpid private economy.
By far the most objectionable aspect of Burnham’s agenda, however, is the name he has chosen for it. As the Mayor of Greater Manchester must be aware, the name ‘Manchesterism’ is already associated with the rich history of an older political movement hailing from that city, one which embodied principles entirely opposite to Burnham’s own.
Benjamin Disraeli coined the phrase ‘the Manchester School’ in 1848 to describe an influential faction of radical liberals led by two Manchester-based industrialists: Richard Cobden and John Bright. These two men are best remembered today for having founded the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839, which indefatigably lobbied against the most significant protectionist tariffs of their day, the so-called Corn Laws.
The Corn Laws, which restricted the importation of all cereal grains, had been enacted in 1815 in a transparent attempt to boost the agricultural incomes of the old, aristocratic ‘landed interest’. The effect of these regulations was to raise food prices to unbearable heights and to burden British businesses with higher wage bills and restricted options for trade. When the Irish Potato Famine exposed the full effects of these restrictions on the importation of food, the Manchester Liberals finally persuaded Sir Robert Peel to abolish the Corn Laws in 1846, laying the foundations for the explosive growth of the British economy in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Nor was Manchesterism a single-issue coalition. Cobden, Bright and their followers were principled liberals, inspired by the writings of Adam Smith and Frédéric Bastiat. They were outspoken not only in their advocacy of free trade abroad, but also of free markets at home, free speech, and limited government in general; ideas anathema to most modern centre-leftists such as Burnham, and indeed to many of the policymakers of all parties who can claim credit for the state of Britain today, 180 years after the abolition of the Corn Laws.
If Andy Burnham sincerely wished to revitalise Britain’s economy, rather than merely managing its continued decline, he would do well to emulate the true Manchesterism of Cobden and Bright, rather than merely appropriating its name for his own uninspiring agenda.
George Pickering is a researcher at the think tank Bright Blue. He holds a doctorate in Economic History from the University of Oxford.
The recent setback to Andy Burnham’s parliamentary ambitions seems to have done little to diminish expectations that he could be the man to finally end the troubled premiership of Keir Starmer.
Even after having been blocked from running in the Gorton and Denton by-election, the Greater Manchester Mayor is still amongst the bookies’ favourites to become the next Labour leader. Indeed, his rejection of Starmer’s offer of a safe Labour seat in 2027 suggests that Burnham still expects to be able to return to Parliament and challenge Starmer long before the next general election.
Burnham offered some clues as to what his agenda as Prime Minister might be in a speech he recently delivered to the IFS and the UCL Policy Lab. There, Burnham appeared to lament Britain’s wince-making national debt, describing the country as “in hock to the bond markets.” This would all be very well if Burnham meant to tackle the debt by the obvious means of restraining government spending. However, proposing spending cuts in any area – except, perhaps, defence – would be unlikely to endear him to the Labour rank-and-file.
Instead, Burnham argued that Britain should follow the example of Manchester’s supposedly miraculous recent economic growth which he attributed to “roll[ing] back the 1980s and [taking] more local public control over the essential drivers of the economy, such as housing, utilities, transport and education.”
However, it is far from clear that “Manchesterism,” as Burnham has called his programme, would really be the miracle cure to Britain’s economic woes. For one thing, it seems probable that the official figures suggesting exceptional productivity growth in Manchester have overestimated the number of new professional jobs in the city, and fail to account for the city’s lack of wage growth, except amongst those benefitting from recent hikes in the minimum wage.
Burnham’s proposals also hardly seem novel enough to be considered their own distinctive programme deserving its own special soubriquet. It is difficult to imagine any centre-left figure who would not echo Burnham’s wearily predictable denouncement of austerity, Brexit, deregulation and privatisation as “the four horsemen of Britain’s apocalypse.” Nor is it clear how increasing state control of housing, utilities, transport and education – hardly bastions of unregulated enterprise – would apply the needed smelling salts to Britain’s torpid private economy.
By far the most objectionable aspect of Burnham’s agenda, however, is the name he has chosen for it. As the Mayor of Greater Manchester must be aware, the name ‘Manchesterism’ is already associated with the rich history of an older political movement hailing from that city, one which embodied principles entirely opposite to Burnham’s own.
Benjamin Disraeli coined the phrase ‘the Manchester School’ in 1848 to describe an influential faction of radical liberals led by two Manchester-based industrialists: Richard Cobden and John Bright. These two men are best remembered today for having founded the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839, which indefatigably lobbied against the most significant protectionist tariffs of their day, the so-called Corn Laws.
The Corn Laws, which restricted the importation of all cereal grains, had been enacted in 1815 in a transparent attempt to boost the agricultural incomes of the old, aristocratic ‘landed interest’. The effect of these regulations was to raise food prices to unbearable heights and to burden British businesses with higher wage bills and restricted options for trade. When the Irish Potato Famine exposed the full effects of these restrictions on the importation of food, the Manchester Liberals finally persuaded Sir Robert Peel to abolish the Corn Laws in 1846, laying the foundations for the explosive growth of the British economy in the second half of the nineteenth century.
Nor was Manchesterism a single-issue coalition. Cobden, Bright and their followers were principled liberals, inspired by the writings of Adam Smith and Frédéric Bastiat. They were outspoken not only in their advocacy of free trade abroad, but also of free markets at home, free speech, and limited government in general; ideas anathema to most modern centre-leftists such as Burnham, and indeed to many of the policymakers of all parties who can claim credit for the state of Britain today, 180 years after the abolition of the Corn Laws.
If Andy Burnham sincerely wished to revitalise Britain’s economy, rather than merely managing its continued decline, he would do well to emulate the true Manchesterism of Cobden and Bright, rather than merely appropriating its name for his own uninspiring agenda.