Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, gave a speech on 29 June setting out a plan to shift how Britain's economy works. He wants to give local leaders — mayors, councils and regional authorities — much more control over money and decisions that Westminster currently holds onto. He has called this idea 'Manchesterism'.

The basic argument is about how power is structured. Burnham says that people running cities and regions should decide things like how money is spent, where new buildings go, transport investment and skills training — choices that London currently makes for them.

Burnham left Parliament some years ago and is now positioning himself as someone who understands Westminster but stands apart from it. AP News described him as a Westminster insider turned regional leader who is building a profile for higher office. His Manchester speech should be read partly as a policy outline and partly as a way to raise his national profile.

Reuters reported that 'Manchesterism' involves giving local leaders real control over budgets, planning decisions, transport money and skills funding. Greater Manchester would be the first place where this is tested.

Burnham has framed this as a ten-year plan. That matters. Real change to how money flows and institutions work takes longer than one Parliament. Shorter timescales would feel like empty promises to the mayors and council leaders who would have to buy into the idea.

The key point to understand is what 'Manchesterism' actually is right now. It is a vision with proposals. It is not a detailed government plan that has been checked by official forecasters, not a manifesto with costings, and not something that Parliament has voted to back. There is a big gap between those two things — that is where the real politics happen. Burnham does not have a seat in Parliament and leads a regional authority, not a government department. Getting from a Manchester stage to running the country would require winning a general election and a Labour leadership race that has not yet started.

The argument for devolving power has solid evidence behind it. The OECD (a club of wealthy countries that studies policy) and Britain's own research into regional inequality have both found that England is unusually centralised when you compare it to similar countries. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all have their own powers — Scotland's parliament (Holyrood) has the most; Wales's assembly (the Senedd) has less; Northern Ireland's (Stormont) has its own constraints. England's regional authorities, by contrast, have been built piecemeal since 2014, with each one negotiating its own deal rather than having rights written into law. Burnham's point — that this is messy and economically wasteful — is backed by research across the political spectrum, even if people disagree on what to do about it.

What Burnham is trying to do is use a regional job to launch a national idea. The tool is ideas, not votes — at least for now. 'Manchesterism' as a brand is designed to work like 'Thatcherism' or 'Blairism' used to: tie a way of thinking about government to a person before that person is in power.

The people who really matter here are not journalists in the Westminster press gallery. They are the network of mayors, council leaders and regional chiefs who would actually benefit if more power moved from London. Whether they buy in will determine whether this stays a Manchester speech or becomes the start of something larger.