The places that would benefit from Burnham's 'power shift' - and where wouldn't

Andy Burnham looks on track to become the UK’s next prime minister – and he has big ideas about how the country should be run.

On Monday, the Makerfield MP and former Greater Manchester mayor gave his first major speech since returning to Westminster, setting out the kind of leader he hopes to be.

His central pitch is simple: move money and power out of Whitehall and hand more of it to regions, towns and councils far across the country.

New EU border checks should be suspended before peak summer, aviation industry leaders have said, after Brits reported huge delays due to the new Entry/Exit System (EES). 

The system, rolled out fully in April, involves people from the UK having their fingerprints registered and photographs taken to enter certain countries.

The EES is used to enter the Schengen Area, which consists of 29 European countries, mainly in the EU.

For most UK travellers, the process is done at foreign airports.

Severe operational consequences disrupting passengers and putting border authorities, airports and airlines under unsustainable pressure.

Senior figures at three major aviation industry bodies wrote to Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission warning waiting times at border control had “increased significantly, now reaching up to five hours”.

Since it’s implementation, the EES has caused travel chaos for Brits.

Russia launched a large-scale attack on Ukraine’s capital Kyiv with missiles and drones, killing at least 13 people and injuring dozens more.

Russia launched a series of strikes on Kyiv, hitting residential ⁠buildings and ⁠triggering ​a fire in a hotel on a central boulevard.

Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko has said 13 people had been killed, ⁠with about three dozen locations across the city damaged in the attacks.

Many residents took shelter at metro stations after the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, issued the first warnings of the attack.

Zelenskyy was forced to cut short a trip to Dublin on Wednesday, citing intelligence reports of a large-scale Russian attack.

Ukraine said on Tuesday it hit one of Russia’s largest satellite communication centers in north Moscow for the second time in just over a week.

Russian president Vladimir Putin also recently admitted Russia is facing fuel shortages after Ukraine launched repeated strikes on oil refineries, while Kyiv notably launched a large-scale attack on Moscow last month.

Sir Keir Starmer’s much-delayed Defence Investment Plan had one big bet at its heart: drones are the future of warfare.

American company Anduril makes the “Seabed Sentry“- a weighted cylinder that uses sensors and AI to monitor what is happening under the sea. They could be used to listen out for spying and sabotage by Russian submarines. They are far cheaper than crewed submarines using traditional sonar.

A dozen of the cylinders can be dropped onto the seabed at a time by an autonomous submarine, with the devices forming a network which communicate between themselves and listens out for undersea activity.

The UK is woefully unprepared with the Royal Navy in a desperate condition. Whoever sits in Downing Street come next September will need to address matters of defence, homeland and cyber defence especially, with urgency.

Officials have drawn up contingency plans to cut further green levies from energy bills if prices remain high this winter, The i Paper has been told.

Several options are now circulating among Burnham’s transition team who are believed to be weighing up how to deliver on that pledge. A Treasury source said work on a package was ongoing to help with rising costs.

Burnham could remove remaining green levies from energy bills, funded through general taxation instead.

One proposal would be to raise the bank surcharge from its current 3 per cent.

Replace stamp duty, loosen fiscal rules and tax the capital gains uplift on inherited assets.

A written statement published by the Chancellor said the remaining sum would be “confirmed at Budget 2026, in a fair and balanced way”.

The coronation of Andy Burnham is fraught with dangers. Never will a prime minister have arrived in Downing Street with so little scrutiny of what he wants to do.

Electric flying taxis could be above the streets of London by 2028, a manufacturer has claimed. Here’s what you need to know.

Vertical Aerospace is still testing the aircraft and it will need to be approved by both the approval from the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the European Aviation Safety Authority (EASA). But the company says the aim is for air taxis to become as cheap and convenient as ordering an Uber to the airport.

Burnham says his plan could change everything from how homes get built to how much you pay for the basics. But how much power actually reaches your area is a different question.

Let’s take a look at what he is promising – and where could miss out.

In his speech in Manchester, Burnham said Westminster “is broken” and the country is “stuck in a rut” after “20 years of falling living standards”.

Pitching himself as the answer, he promised “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen” and said he would give Britain “the circuit breaker it needs”.

He would run the country “the Greater Manchester way”, the MP said, taking power out of Whitehall and handing it to the councils and mayors he argues know their areas best.

Power out of Whitehall: Burnham proposed moving part of the Prime Minister’s Office to Manchester – a “No 10 in the North” he dubbed “the nerve centre of a rewired Britain”. This, he said, would push power and money out to the regions. Burnham added he would “strive for equivalent living conditions in all parts of Britain”, and said: “The days of Whitehall fighting the devolution of power into the regions and nations are over for good”.

Housing: He pledged “the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period”, built on “vacant public land” and a “national housing first philosophy” modelled on Finland. He pointed to the loss of “almost one and a half million council homes since the 1980s”.

Your bills: He said all parts of the UK should be able to “take greater public control of essential services like water, housing, energy, and transport”, with “10-year plans to bring down the cost of these essentials”. The model is Manchester’s Bee Network, which brought local buses back under public control.

Work and welfare: Burnham backed “devolution of employment support” through community and voluntary sector bodies people “trust”. He said this would “reduce the welfare bill in a way that is fair and lasting”. He also vowed to end a school system “configured entirely around the university route”.

The high street: He promised to “reform business rates to support pubs and high street businesses” and to protect “more green spaces from development”.

Experts broadly back the idea of handing power to local areas. But some areas are better placed to gain than others – at least to begin with.

Areas with a mayor and devolution deal: Mirte Boot, interim head of IPPR North, said handing power “down to local leaders and the people who really know their places the best” was a “really positive” step. She argued that areas that already have a mayor – like the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and Liverpool City Region – can move quickest to make use of the new powers Burnham is proposing.

Areas that keep more of their own tax: Andrew Carter, chief executive of Centre for Cities, said the “important next step is fiscal devolution” – letting places keep a share of the tax they generate, so an area that grows its economy sees the reward directly rather than sending it all to the Treasury. Jim O’Neill, the former Goldman Sachs economist now advising Burnham, has said this is “on the agenda to study in a serious way”.

Places that run their own services: Burnham wants all areas to take “greater public control of essential services like water, housing, energy, and transport”, with 10-year plans aimed at bringing down what households pay for them. It’s not clear which areas would get more control and when, but those that do could see reductions in their bills.

London, too: Harry Quilter-Pinner, executive director at the IPPR think-tank, said over-centralisation “has held back growth, productivity and living standards for too long”, and that it hurts the capital as it is “blighted by overcrowding and house price inflation” more than the North.

The harder question is which places Burnham’s proposals may not reach.

City suburbs: Greater Manchester’s growth “has not translated into an outperformance in earnings or income growth”, according to Oxford Economics, with the gap widest in the outer boroughs. Places like Salford, Bolton and Rochdale have seen less of the economic benefits than the city centre – a sign that a thriving core does not automatically lift the towns around it.

Areas without a mayor: The plan runs through mayors, and not everywhere has one. Cumbria and Cheshire are not due to elect one until 2027, while Devon and Lancashire have deals to take on more powers but no mayor – and no date set to get one. Boot warned there must be “careful thinking about places that don’t have a mayor” and what can be done to speed up the process so they too can benefit from extended devolved powers.

Coastal and rural areas: These often have no mayor and need a different approach from a big city. Cornwall is one example – it does not have a mayor, and its economy is heavily reliant on seasonal tourism. Boot said such places “will need a different economic strategy than what Manchester has”, and they could wait longest, as Carter says it is “sensible to start in the big cities first”.

Everywhere, at first: Burnham has said he is sticking to strict spending rules, so this is mostly about moving existing money around, not finding new cash. Akash Paun, of the Institute for Government, said that even if devolution does lift struggling areas, the pay-off “doesn’t happen overnight” – so in the short term, spending more on one service could mean “cuts elsewhere”.

Burnham could be confirmed as Labour leader, likely unopposed, as early as Friday 17 July. He would then take over from Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister on Monday 20 July – the day after the World Cup final.

That could change if a challenger comes forward, which would trigger a leadership contest and mean the new prime minister – Burnham or not – wouldn’t be in place until August.

But if he does become prime minister, Burnham’s proposed changes would come in stages rather than all at once.

The “No 10 North” base in Manchester and the shift in how Whitehall works could begin within his first weeks.

But the bigger promises – on council housing, utilities and devolved budgets – are part of a “10-year mission” even Burnham himself admits will take time.