Standard Chartered Bank\u2019s Chief Economist for Europe and UK, Christopher Graham, reviews Andy Burnham\u2019s plan to make devolution a central pillar of his premiership. The report highlights the UK\u2019s unusually centralised structure versus OECD peers, outlines potential gains from shifting power to local institutions, and stresses that benefits and costs depend on pace, design and institutional strength of devolution.<\/p>\n
Burnham\u2019s Manchesterism and UK centralisation<\/p>\n
“Andy Burnham has signalled that as prime minister he would make devolution a key pillar of his vision for reforming the British state.”<\/p>\n
“Burnham\u2019s tenure as mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017 \u2013 during which the city-region\u2019s growth has been twice that of the UK \u2013 has shaped his political vision, \u2018Manchesterism\u2019, a form of economic devolution that shifts power from Westminster to local institutions to drive more inclusive, place-based growth that helps reduce regional inequalities.”<\/p>\n
“Devolution could serve Burnham well by offering the Labour Party an overarching economic vision that was often lacking under Starmer and could command some degree of cross-party support.”<\/p>\n
“The UK is also one of the most centralised advanced economies, according to OECD data, and separate studies have pointed to particularly large disparities in economic performance and productivity relative to its peers.”<\/p>\n
“The academic consensus on whether devolution delivers economic benefits is mixed, however, as is the evidence of the UK\u2019s modern devolution agenda since 1999.”<\/p>\n
(This article was created with the help of an Artificial Intelligence tool and reviewed by an editor.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Standard Chartered Bank\u2019s Chief Economist for Europe and UK, Christopher Graham, reviews Andy Burnham\u2019s plan to make devolution…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":590531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-665777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665777"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665777\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/590531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}