REVIEW: Head North by Andy Burnham

His Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain did not rouse one reader

History does not repeat, but sometimes it rhymes. Just a century ago, one man hailing from the fringe of a nation with an unravelling political order cast himself into its centre by his home-spun charm and radical new vision, riding the waves of an establishment in disarray, incapable of meeting the historical moment. His fortunes were to lapse, and he was momentarily forced out of the limelight — but his faith in the inevitability of his return and ultimate ascension was unshakeable. During his exile from national politics, he began work on a book — part autobiographical, part manifesto — and a delineation of an ideological programme. That man’s name was Adolf Hitler.

Burnham’s struggle (and my own)

Much like Mein Kampf before it, the first half of Andy Burnham's (who has now also found a penchant for sartorial messaging) and Steve Rotheram’s soft manifesto, Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain (2024), begins as a biography of its authors. Also eerily similar is Burnham and Rotheram’s decision to follow on from biography with an outline of a plan for the destruction of the country — and possibly Europe with it. Nevertheless, much like that first infamous book, perhaps it is incumbent upon us to read it to discover what drives our soon-to-be Dear Leader. I have done so myself, so that you don’t have to.

They begin, of course, at a Liverpool pub, discussing football while listening to The Smiths. I would be quite interested to learn what Morrissey — a man who has supported Anne Marie Waters’ For Britain Party and is an avid fan of the nationalist commentator Morgoth’s Review — thinks of Andy Burnham. Naturally, Hillsborough (the great Northern ‘stab-in-the-back’) is the hinge upon which much of the book rests. Both authors see the event as central to their political and personal identities, and bring up the fact that it was ‘man-made’ and that ‘the powers-that-be — the establishment — fought tooth and nail to cover [it] up in the years that followed.’ Perhaps Andy and Steve, both Mayors of Metropolitan Areas (with responsibilities extending to, for instance, the functions of a local Police and Crime Commissioner) could have dealt with another man-made tragedy that occurred extensively in the North which the powers-that-be covered up. Fortunately for them, no such events ever happened. We are blessed indeed.

The rest of the first half is mostly trite, explaining their upbringings and how they entered politics. But I suppose to the authors’ credit(?) there are some astonishing moments of candour, such as Burnham’s admission that his girlfriend, now-wife, ‘disappeared to Gibraltar’ with a fellow participant of the show Blind Date. You couldn’t waterboard that out of me, but perhaps I was never cut out for this business. There are also some fantastic nuggets about how Burnham’s attendance at a The Smiths concert gave him an advantage over his fellow students at Cambridge, ‘who went to much posher schools’. Your humble reviewer must confess that by the time we are halfway through the chapter on their SW1 careers, he gave up and skipped to Part 2, ‘Our Vision’. Though I couldn’t take any more navel-gazing, I thought the good readers of Pimlico Journal deserved at least some engagement with the ideas driving the next Prime Minister.

Devo Max++

Burnham and Rotheram appear to have the idea that federal systems are just bloody brilliant, and point particularly to Germany as the ultimate expression of this perfection. Burnham is effusive about Germany’s ‘written constitution and basic law’ (seemingly not understanding that these are the same thing), especially the provision that stipulates that ‘there must be equivalent living standards’ between the German Länder. According to Burnham, to achieve this, wealthier states pay into a central pot, which is then redistributed around the country to ensure poorer regions have the same standards as richer ones. This love affair with our sauerkraut-eating cousins leads our authors into the maxim that total devolution and a federalised Britain is the way forward.

And here it is straight from the horse’s mouth — Devo Max++ will not lead to London retaining a greater percentage of its tax revenues. This was always obvious. But since some journalists have already begun to obfuscate the narrative — perhaps sensing that the regional sectarianism in the new government will exhaust itself with voters quickly — by suggesting that with greater devolution, London will ‘keep’ a greater percentage of the tax revenues it raises, we thought it worth engaging with.

The steelman of this argument relies on devolved governments dedicating a greater percentage of their expenditure to local infrastructure, which will, in the long term, improve the growth and dynamism of the respective regions. This would work in tandem with the ability of local authorities to compete with each other for investment, the movement of labour, and all of the policies alongside infrastructure alone underpinning those decisions. If we want to be maximally generous to the devolutionist vision, this is already reflected in the looser planning and licensing laws of Manchester vis-à-vis Sadiq Khan’s London. This could enable regional specialisations across a wider span of the country and diversify the national economy. It could, hypothetically, produce a healthier political and economic dynamic with London — if its services exports can also find a larger domestic market. The capital may then be able to retain a greater proportion of its tax revenues, which are currently spent predominantly on paying the state’s welfare and public service obligations to the rest of the country. In essence, this version of the pitch is an appeal to an older, more laissez-faire period in British governance.

This would work only on a completely blank political canvas. Local government in Britain was once free to make its own decisions about taxation (collected on domestic and business property in ‘the rates’) and spending. Over the nineteenth and early twentieth century, these authorities were given a growing remit of duties to the public by Parliament — but crucially, funds were to be collected from the rates or local borrowing that was not underwritten by the central government. These responsibilities included the provision of public goods as well as the much older system of Poor Law distribution. Towards the turn of the century, councils successfully borrowed large sums from private lenders to build sanitation, transportation, electricity, and gas infrastructure — and paid off the loans from new revenues generated by resultant growth. By 1905, local government expenditure reached its peak at one-third of total state expenditure.

This system also led to huge divergences in the quality of services to residents across county, municipal, or borough councils, in an extreme form of the ‘postcode lottery’. The local Labour Party’s Poplar Borough Rates Rebellion in 1921 saw the council (in a highly deprived area) accrue huge debts to pay a significantly higher rate of Poor Law in response to the post-war unemployment crisis. This was an intentional effort to present the Coalition Government with a fait accompli to force a bailout and reform of the welfare system. Though Poplar’s leading councillors were sent to jail, the rebellion spelt the end of service provision funded by local revenue. It is for this reason that since 1929, Britain has only ever been more involved in the business of redistributing local revenues around the country. Today, over two-thirds of local spending is covered by Westminster grants.

In present-day British political culture, the implications of this model of local governance are unfathomable, especially to those who are currently the strongest advocates of devolution. Given there is absolutely zero chance that the national government — and a Labour Government, least of all — would ever entertain the possibility that the decisions of local functionaries should lead to seriously negative consequences, such as genuinely ruthless cuts to service provision (higher rates of tax being a singular exception) for residents particular to one region. This would both be unacceptable within the region in question and, given that England (broadly speaking) thinks of itself as one, would probably also be unacceptable to many people living elsewhere. The trade-offs between infrastructure investment, local welfare spending, and tax cuts will never have to be seriously considered by local authorities in this country.

It is already the case that councils and local governments find themselves heavily indebted and making persistently bad investments to try to cover their impossible obligations. Birmingham City Council’s terrible decision to cover 25% of the costs of the Commonwealth Games led to a budget shortfall that had to be made up from contingency funds, sharpening an already fragile fiscal situation. Thurrock Council has similarly found itself in dire straits on the back of frankly stupid borrowing decisions and risky commercial investments, and getting itself embroiled in one of the largest local government financial scandals. Many other councils that borrowed heavily (often investing in commercial property) following the loosening of restrictions by the Conservatives — who were, of course, themselves partisans of devolution — may find themselves in trouble in the next few years.

A devolutionist may argue greater local control leads to greater local responsibility, which in turn leads to superior outcomes for both the local area and the country as a whole. This may be so in theory, but in practice no central government will actually make local residents — regardless of whether or not they made poor political choices — seriously suffer from the irresponsibility of their local representatives, which means that the second part of this equation will never come to fruition. And of course, Burnham himself would be the first to bail out on highly generous terms any irresponsible council that managed to bankrupt itself. Thus any form of devolution in Britain will only ever lead to a greater extraction from the metropole for next to no reward. Without an incentive structure that will reward a greater proportion of investment spending towards long-term revenue growth, the impulse of devolved authorities will remain the same — mostly spaffing London’s money at the wall.

Burnham, however, at least judging by the contents of Head North, seems to have no awareness of this history or answer to how the perverse incentives in local government could be changed (outside of more, that is). He also seems to have only a very superficial understanding of the country he idolises (which, as it happens, had its star fading even as the book was being written). The Basic Law, Burnham claims, is why German towns and cities have such excellent public transport systems, public spheres, and a wider geographical distribution of wealth. Astute (or indeed, basic) pupils of German history might wonder whether the fact that Germany spent much of the last eight hundred years as a loose confederation of independent states — each with their own urban agglomerations and internal networks of trade and governance — would feature in this analysis, or indeed, even more obviously, the fact that half of the German capital was occupied by Communists for forty-five years. No: this singular element of the 1949 Constitution drawn up by the Allied Powers (who, as it happened, had a great interest — and not an economic one — in promoting a federalised Germany) is the reason Germany is the prosperous country it is today.

Of course, this entirely ignores the fact that Germany is, in fact, a deeply unequal country, despite its stark redistributive efforts. Most obviously, the former East Germany, in many ways, functions as their very own North. Regional incomes are far lower than their Western counterparts, and this has fuelled a huge amount of resentment. It is unsurprising, then, that much like the North has been turning into a strong bastion of Reform support, East Germany functions in much the same way for their own populist right-wing party, the AfD. Meanwhile, even in the former West Germany, in which the scars of Communism cannot be used as an excuse, large parts of the Rhineland have increasingly suffered from deindustrialisation; there is little sign that this will be changing any time soon.

Burnham and Rotheram essentially want the central government to hand over money to federalised regions and local authorities to spend the cash as they like. Given the billions lost by local government every year to waste (and in some cases fraud), many might hesitate to implement such a suggestion in this country. Burnham and Rotheram, however, are undeterred. They invite the reader to imagine how Britain would look if we had adopted a codified constitution with a Basic Law; the result is that ‘Liverpool would certainly have a tram system.’

Other proposals include proportional representation and aptly emotionally-named laws such as a ‘Hillsborough Law’ (already introduced to parliament) and a ‘Grenfell Law’. As per the bill introduced to Parliament, the ‘Hillsborough Law’ would supposedly make it harder for public authorities to cover things up. Speaking of cover-ups, it is strange, then, that at no point are the grooming gangs mentioned at all in this book. One should think that champions of the North might want to, even briefly, mention one of the most horrifying events that occurred on British soil, many of the worst cases having occurred in places like Rotherham (which Rotheram, admittedly, is not actually from), Bradford, and Oldham — which is part of Greater Manchester itself. But not a peep. When confronted about the issue outside of the book, Burnham has claimed to be ‘proud’ of his grooming gangs probes, meaning the decision not to include them in his book can only be described as strange.

They laze through some fairly bog-standard Blair-adjacent reforms, like abolishing the House of Lords to create a ‘Senate of the Nations and Regions’, and some changes to the education system. This ties into Burnham’s recent proposals that any economic decision made in Westminster must take into account its impact on ‘regional inequality’ and seek to reduce it. As if Westminster didn’t have enough statute to consider already. On the other hand, going exactly the opposite direction of Blair, they also wish to weaken or end the party whip system. However, this seems to be more a question of party machinery than law. It will be interesting to see whether Burnham holds himself to account here and never issues any whips.

We round off with a suggestion that smashes its head against reality. Net Zero, the authors say, can be used as an industrial strategy to create growth and jobs in the North, and lead to a reindustrialisation of the region. Green Industrialism — rather appropriately, a policy slogan of the Biden Administration — is now curiously absent from Burnham’s pitch to the public, presumably because absolutely no one actually believes in it in 2026. Again, much like his worship of Germany, Burnham’s book was becoming stale even as it was being written.

Unbeknownst to our authors, it seems, much of the country already acts as a tax-farm for vibes-based ‘left behind’ regions. Burnham has no plans that can seriously fix the persistent issues we have been facing — low productivity, high levels of immigration, chronic underinvestment in infrastructure — because he doesn’t even agree on what the problems are. He would rather add more bars to what we could call the cage, the system of laws and procedures which have prevented central government from doing anything, than actually tackling the problem. He would tie us down permanently and lock in the status quo.

All in all, the book does give us an excellent insight into what drives the ‘King of the North’ who has made his way down to the snake-pit of Westminster. We can only hope that the structural issues any government he will form will no doubt face will prevent him from imposing some of his more insane ideas upon the populace.

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This article was written by David Ogilvy, a Pimlico Journal contributor. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.

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