Andy Burnham has only just returned to Westminster and already I’m beginning to get a sinking feeling about what a Burnham premiership will look like.
Don’t get me wrong, I have no personal beef with the man, indeed by all accounts he did a good job as Mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Ask him and he’ll tell you so; at length.
No, one of the problems I have arises from a headline I read on the BBC website. “Burnham to give mayors more power”. Those who’ve watched Sadiq Khan’s London Mayoralty over the last decade will tell you that the last thing that he needs is more power.
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We’ve seen how Mayor Khan has behaved right here in Richmond upon Thames, interfering with planning decisions which were reached at local level and overturning those he didn’t agree with. As a direct result of his interference not only has a single brick not been laid on the Stag Brewery site, but because of the delay we’ve now lost the new secondary school which was due to be built on the site. Similarly, not a single brick has been laid on the Manor Circus Homebase site even though permission was granted.
And yet, when the Mayor Khan wants to find a suitable whipping boy for failure to build houses he invariably sends for Richmond upon Thames.
And having been given powers over planning, the Mayor is now stretching his legs and trying to grab a piece of the licencing action. Sadiq Khan’s power grab continues by the day.
But back to Andy Burnham, the powers to free up more powers to Mayors predates his return to Westminster, he’s just dressing it up in his own fashion. He’ll be relying heavily on the creatively named English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026. The problem is that the act neither devolves nor empowers communities. What it does is centralise massive powers in the hands of a few individuals.
In politics it always feels a bit lazy to use Yes Minister as a reference point. The problem is that it is such an accurate skewering of both local and national government that it’s hard to resist such a trove of truisms. In the very first episode Sir Humphrey remarks "Always dispose of the difficult bit in the title. It does less harm there than in the text."
And so it is with the Devolution Act. What it could well mean is that powers will be stripped away at local level and handed to the local Mayor. Quite what that will mean for London remains to be seen but, based on past experience, it might not be good for local residents.
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