When Andy Burnham launched his by-election campaign to become MP for Makerfield, he stood in Manchester’s St Peter’s Square, with yellow trams and Renaker’s gleaming skyscrapers behind him, and declared: “Manchesterism is the end of neoliberalism, the end of trickle-down economics.” It is a bold claim for a mayor whose city has become, according to research firm Oxford Economics, “the star performer of the U.K. economy since 2008” – but also, as a New Statesman analysis published this week argues, a “neoliberal metropolis” built on state-backed rentier capitalism.
Burnham, who hopes to replace Keir Starmer as Labour leader after a national election expected in 2029, has artfully branded his political project. At its “heart,” said Louise Haigh, the Labour MP and co-manager of his campaign, “is devolution.” The mantra allows him to run as an insurgent against Westminster, promising to spread power out of London – and, allies hope, to steal a march on Nigel Farage’s Reform UK, currently ahead in the polls.
“Andy Burnham’s “Manchesterism” claims to end neoliberalism, but critics call it a rebrand of rentier capitalism.”
The economic record is real. Oxford Economics found central Manchester’s employment growth “in the top five in Europe since 2008.” Jim O’Neill, former Goldman Sachs chief economist and chair of Manchester-based Northern Gritstone, compares the city’s long-term trajectory from post-industrial decline to services-led success with that of Boston in the 20th century. But he cautioned that the story “pre-dates Andy.”
Yet Burnham’s signature policy – bus re-regulation – is often cited as proof of his left-turn. Fares are cheaper and the system more reliable; but as the New Statesman notes, the buses are not publicly owned, just regulated by a more empowered authority. The real Manchester model, it argues, has been “to use the state to de-risk profitability for a particular kind of rentier capitalism,” leveraging planning powers, public land and subsidies to create a real estate-led regeneration that repopulated the city centre – while also driving rent rises and displacement in inner-city neighbourhoods.
So can “Manchesterism” make Britain great again? London-based analysts are sceptical. The Politico EU article that first popularised the term noted that what works for a city is hard to do at scale. For Burnham, the challenge is whether his local success can survive scrutiny as a national programme – and whether voters outside Manchester will buy a brand that critics say is less a break from neoliberalism than its most polished iteration.