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Before entering Downing Street, Andy Burnham cited the overcentralisation of power as a cause of Britain’s social and economic malaise. In his first week, the new prime minister has signalled his intent to bolster No 10 as an organ of executive power. The apparent contradiction – fortifying the centre to pursue an agenda of decentralisation – arises from a perversity in the way the British state works or, rather, fails to work.
The prime minister is right that too much policy has historically been directed from Whitehall. Reforms in recent years have created institutions with varying degrees of local autonomy – elected mayoralties like the one in Manchester that afforded Mr Burnham a platform for national prominence. But genuine control, especially when it comes to fiscal policy, has not matched the rhetoric of devolution. The Treasury is wary of facilitating profligacy in lower tiers of government. Heads of devolved administrations are also adept at claiming credit when things go well and, when they go badly, diverting the blame on to national government.
Meanwhile, the prime minister’s office is thinly resourced in comparison to equivalent institutions in similar democracies. Vital functions depend on a small number of special advisers, who are often too buffeted by crises to focus on strategic direction. A lack of focus in No 10 allows chancellors to monopolise economic policymaking.
Under Sir Keir Starmer, those systemic weaknesses were aggravated by his failure to set clear priorities. His Downing Street operation was directionless and ineffective. Mr Burnham looks reassuringly determined to correct that mistake. A notable appointment in his new cabinet is the elevation of Louise Haigh, a close ally, to the role of first secretary of state with responsibility for government coordination. She will be running the Cabinet Office as a department for enacting the will of the prime minister.
Ms Haigh has spoken of the need for a “proper beefed-up economic unit” in No 10, suggesting a rebalancing of power away from the Treasury. John Healey, the new chancellor, is a Whitehall veteran and no pushover when it comes to departmental turf wars, as his resignation as defence secretary from Sir Keir’s cabinet showed. But he is not a big beast of the species likely to build a power base to rival Mr Burnham.
The new prime minister has already asserted personal authority over economic policymaking by choosing a VAT cut on energy bills as his first emblematic act in office. His declared longer‑term intention to reconfigure Britain’s national political and economic model – an epoch-defining redistribution of power – will require a level of interdepartmental coordination for which there is not much recent precedent. The same applies to his ambition to build a “preventive state”, making smart strategic interventions early to avoid “paying for failure” down the line.
An early test will be whether Mr Burnham’s mooted No 10 North looks like a significant institutional innovation – a shift in the centre of national political gravity, not just a gesture of compensation for generations of southern bias. Mr Burnham will need to marshal the full authority of his office to drive change through systems that are prone to inertia, but the new prime minister seems to understand this challenge. He knows the paradox of devolution: that it takes a confident assertion of central power to give real power away.
