A slow-burn political revolution is taking place in the north of England. At the fifth Convention of the North last week in Leeds, metro mayors once again joined forces to bang the drum for a better deal from central government and greater powers. After May’s council elections, their ranks will be swelled by the first leader of the new York and North Yorkshire combined authority. By 2025, a mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire is expected to be in place.
At that point, the vast majority of northern England will be covered by mayoral combined authorities. A decade-old model successfully pioneered by Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester (and Andy Street in the West Midlands) has gradually become the new normal, as regions seek similar “trailblazer” freedoms in areas such as transport, housing and skills.
So far, so wonky, perhaps. Outside the council chamber and the specialist thinktank, the mechanics of local government reform tend not to capture the imagination. But the rise of the metro mayors carries potentially gamechanging political implications. It is a cross-party commonplace, post-Brexit, that power in England has become far too concentrated in Westminster. But as a recent paper on UK regional inequalities notes, this was precisely the outcome sought by the Conservative governments of the 1980s.
As Margaret Thatcher’s governments deindustrialised and privatised Britain’s economy at brutal, reckless speed, they also took a sledgehammer to municipal centres of political resistance in cities such as Sheffield. Local government in the north (and in London) was enfeebled for ideological reasons, long before being hollowed out by austerity. The legacy of this twin-track assault is the dysfunctional England we know, where one of the most centralised polities in Europe presides over some of the highest regional disparities. According to a report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research last week, the north’s wealth gap in relation to the rest of England is still growing, notwithstanding the government’s anaemic and semi-abandoned levelling up programme.
Devolution is not a magic bullet when it comes to reducing that gap, or addressing other metrics that speak to yawning, socially corrosive divides in areas such as life expectancy. Post-unification, Germany spent €2tn improving the prospects of its eastern Länder, and the job is still far from done. Under Rishi Sunak, whether in the Treasury or Downing Street, the political will and the economic firepower to drive regional growth from the centre have been entirely absent. Nevertheless, the expanding and increasingly assertive alliance of northern metro mayors – and the popularity of experiments such as taking bus services back under public control in Greater Manchester – marks potentially the biggest sea change in local politics since the 1980s.
For a future Labour government, this can be a major opportunity. Alongside Mr Burnham in Manchester, Labour mayors currently run West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and Liverpool city region. Given room for manoeuvre and resources, they can revive a powerful municipal ethos dedicated to righting some of the wrongs of past decades. Empowered local growth strategies, run from the bottom up, would go with the grain of Sir Keir Starmer’s five national missions. So would the return of properly funded public services after decades of outsourcing and cost cutting. Given a fair wind, a new north can become a showcase for solutions to Britain’s longstanding “geography of discontent”.
• Join mayors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram for a Guardian Live online event on Wednesday 13 March at 8pm GMT. Book tickets here
