No.10 North: Burnham needs to be clear-eyed about the purpose of his Manchester office

At any given time, No.10 is – or should be – the immediate policy, communications, and political support machine around the prime minister; the responder to daily crises; the arbiter of cabinet disagreements; tracker and driver of the PM’s priorities; the strategic brain setting the vision for the rest of government; and the ceremonial heart of the British State.  

But No.10 too often neglects these core responsibilities. Daily crisis management, not-stop communications work, and compulsive involvement in departmental decisions have left No.10 overwhelmed while also disempowering the rest of government. The space for strategic, long-term thinking and vision-setting for the rest of government has been all but squeezed out of the current operation – with this vacuum unhelpfully filled by HM Treasury.  

Rethinking and reshaping No.10 is long overdue, but Andy Burnham’s vision of a No.10 North will only succeed if he knows – and spells out in public – what a split operation is for.

Some of the No.10 operation has to stay in London  

Burnham’s “No.10 North” is, he says, designed to “help power flow into all areas of the country” and be “in charge of long term economic strategy”. This appears to be part of a beefed up No.10 operation, bolstering the centre’s involvement in English devolution (currently run from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, MHCLG), and adding additional economic expertise to balance the heft of the Treasury (something the Institute has previously called for).  

While moving parts of government out of London can work, moving parts of No.10 is more complicated – and Burnham would be being wilfully naïve if he thought all of No.10 could move out of the capital wholesale. Parliament, ministers, MPs, and many civil servants are based in London, and the prime minister will have to spend most of his time there. He will need daily political, policy and comms support from a London-based No.10, as well as a team there who can crack heads across the rest of Whitehall – including to devolve power away from SW1. When secretaries of state and ministers are based in London, Cabinet meetings held across the country are expensive, pointless exercises trying to show you care about place; more reductive than real.

As for the building itself, a decrepit, mouse-ridden warren should not be the heart of a modern government. But No.10 serves an important purpose. It is the ceremonial centre of the UK government – which matters for our international relationships and for the narrative we hold ourselves about the British state – and a good venue for significant meetings. So Burnham should turn 10 Downing Street into wholly ceremonial premises, and repurpose 70 Whitehall (current home of part of the Cabinet Office) for the real work that needs to happen in London. A No.10 North could also provide some of that same symbolic function, signalling the intent of a Burnham government to shifting power out of Whitehall.

A strategic team in Manchester could set the vision for a Burnham government

A Burnham government must avoid duplicating the London functions of No.10 in a Manchester office. Two sets of advisers claiming to speak for the prime minister, but failing to speak to each other, spells disaster and deadlock for the rest of government. Nor is it plausible or sensible to require your whole operation to decamp on the West Coast Mainline twice a week. Another mistake would be to carve out some ad hoc roles or functions to move north. Those jobs would rapidly lose power and prestige and be frozen out. Instead, Burnham needs to set out clearly what moves – wholesale – to Manchester.

That has to be the strategic centre for his devolution plans: the thinking and talking about the long-term vision for a Burnham government on how devolution will work in theory and in practice, and how central government will work with strategic authorities to drive the “good growth” Burnham seeks. For too long, the people in Downing Street have been sucked into the minutiae of daily governing. Physically separating a part of No.10 – clearly focused on the prime minister’s priorities of devolution and economic growth – could create the space needed to do the long-term work that should be one of the core functions of the focus of the centre of government. And by working on issues at the heart of the Burnham vision for the state, No.10 North would have the power and prestige to make those priorities bite on the system.

This is by no means a simple fix. Some structural factors – the painfully slow transport links between Manchester and the Treasury’s second headquarters in Darlington, and the Wolverhampton location of MHCLG’s second HQ – add further complications, but Burnham can give his No.10 North a proper chance of success by setting out, publicly, so the rest of government can see it, which location is responsible for what functions and policies. He also needs to commit to being there in person on a regular basis – No.10 derives its power from proximity to the prime minister, and an absent PM would risk No.10 North becoming a backwater. For all his commitment to the north and the geographical advantage of his nearby Makerfield constituency, it easier said than done for any PM to promise to be a regular visitor to an outpost of government. Appointing a foreign secretary already known and credible on the world stage, and to whom Burnham can realistically delegate the things that would otherwise take him out of the country, would help.

Burnham is right to strengthen the No.10 operation, and to give the team around him the capacity and space to think about and deliver his top priorities. No.10 North might prove to be part of the solution, but only if the next prime minister is clear about what he wants it to deliver – and the role he will personally play.