Andy Burnham wants you to believe he is about to rewire Britain. With his eyes firmly set on Downing Street, the incoming Prime Minister has spent the last week pitching a grand vision of a decentralized UK, anchored by a brand-new "No 10 North" executive hub in Manchester. He promises to push power "deeper down" and break the iron grip of Whitehall.
But if you look beyond the borders of England, that grand vision looks incredibly small.
To political leaders in Edinburgh, Cardiff, and Belfast, Burnham's pitch didn't sound like a bold new blueprint for a reformed United Kingdom. It sounded like the opening manifesto for a First Minister of England. The collective response from the Celtic nations has been a mix of deep skepticism and outright irritation. They aren't buying the hype, and honestly, it is easy to see why.
The core issue is simple. Burnham is viewing constitutional reform through the narrow lens of an English regional mayor. He is treating nations with their own distinct parliaments, legal systems, and national identities as if they are merely larger versions of Greater Manchester.
Instead of steadying a fragile union, his early missteps are already widening the cracks.
The English Blind Spot in the No 10 North Plan
The centerpiece of Burnham's strategy is "Number 10 North," a proposed Manchester-based growth unit meant to bypass traditional Treasury orthodoxy. The goal is to give the Prime Minister an independent economic policy engine to drive long-term regional growth, utilities reform, and council housebuilding.
While English regional leaders might welcome a counterweight to London, the view from the devolved capitals is entirely different.
A senior Scottish government source didn't hold back, remarking that if Burnham thinks Manchester represents the true north, he needs a map. The comment highlights a persistent irritation in Scottish politics. Westminster politicians frequently conflate "the North" of England with the actual north of the UK, completely erasing Scotland from the geographic and political equation.
By framing his decentralized government around a base in Manchester, Burnham has inadvertently signaled where his priorities lie. He is focused on fixing the English regions while treating the distinct national governments of Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland as an afterthought.
When your primary solution to centralization is to set up a secondary shop in a major English metropolitan city, you aren't fixing the union. You are just moving the center of gravity a few hundred miles up the M6.
Why Dundee and Bangor Aren't Buying the Rhetoric
If you want to know how disconnected the incoming administration is from the reality on the ground in the Celtic nations, you only have to look at Burnham's recent speech at the People's History Museum.
He claimed that people in Dundee and Bangor feel just as distant from Holyrood and the Senedd as they do from Westminster.
It was a staggering rhetorical blunder. Dundee is a historic stronghold for the Scottish National Party. Bangor sits in the heartland of Plaid Cymru. These aren't disenfranchised border towns wishing their central governments would pay more attention to them. These are communities that actively voted for national self-determination. Suggesting that a voter in Dundee views their own national parliament in Edinburgh with the same alienation they feel toward London shows a profound lack of political awareness.
To make matters worse, a recent essay Burnham penned for the Scotsman newspaper was riddled with basic errors regarding which powers are actually devolved. When a aspiring prime minister cannot accurately identify which laws are made in Edinburgh versus London, it destroys trust.
Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts pointed out that the aggressive, muscular unionism of the previous Labour leadership under Keir Starmer effectively ended the party's historic dominance in Wales. If Burnham continues down this exact path, treating national devolution as a problem to be managed rather than a constitutional reality to respect, he will face the same wall of resistance.
The Broken Promise of Funding Reform
The skepticism goes far beyond poor rhetoric and geographical ignorance. It comes down to cold, hard cash.
For years, the devolved nations have complained about the Barnett formula, the mechanism used to calculate public spending allocations across the UK. The system is widely seen as outdated, failing to account for specific social needs, poverty levels, and demographic challenges in Wales and Northern Ireland.
Burnham used to agree. In his 2024 book, Head North, he argued passionately for scrapping the Barnett formula. He wrote that funding must be allocated based on social factors and levels of need, warning that a failure to reform the system would permanently widen regional divides.
Yet, as power inches closer, that radicalism has evaporated. Last month, Burnham quietly shifted position, ruling out any immediate changes to the funding formula.
This about-face has gone down incredibly badly in Belfast and Cardiff. For the Celtic nations, true devolution is impossible without financial autonomy and fair funding. Watching a politician ditch his own core principles the moment he enters the Westminster orbit confirms their worst fears.
Michelle O'Neill, the Sinn Féin First Minister of Northern Ireland, summed up the mood perfectly. Commenting on Burnham's upcoming move into Downing Street, she noted that the face might change, but the policy never does.
Two Labours Fighting Over the Future of Power
Behind the scenes, Burnham is trapped between two warring factions within his own parliamentary party.
According to Richard Wyn Jones, director of Cardiff University's Wales Governance Centre, there is a fundamental split over how to handle Scotland and Wales.
On one side, Burnham has a vocal contingent of centralist Scottish and Welsh MPs. These politicians don't want to see Holyrood or the Senedd get a single shred of new authority. Instead, they want Downing Street to bypass the devolved parliaments entirely, funnelling money and projects directly to local councils.
In reality, that is an anti-devolution strategy. It uses local government as a weapon to undermine national parliaments. It is an attempt to claw back control under the guise of localism. And as Jones bluntly observed, this faction does not care about Belfast at all.
On the other side is the more traditional devolutionist wing of the party, represented by figures like former Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford, who traveled to Makerfield to campaign for Burnham. This group wants to finish the incomplete business of devolution. In Wales, that means transferring control over criminal justice, rail infrastructure, and the Crown Estate.
Right now, it looks like the centralist wing is winning Burnham's ear. By offering vague promises of moving power "deeper down" without committing to specific structural transfers to Edinburgh or Cardiff, Burnham is trying to please everyone and satisfying no one.
The Next Structural Steps for UK Devolution
If the incoming government wants to avoid an immediate constitutional crisis with the Celtic nations, the vague rhetoric needs to stop. True decentralization cannot be managed by an English-centric unit in Manchester.
The administration must take concrete steps to rebuild broken bridges:
- Audit Devolved Competencies: The Cabinet Office needs an immediate, accurate assessment of current devolved powers to prevent further embarrassing policy errors in Scotland and Wales.
- Establish Direct Intergovernmental Councils: Move away from unilateral declarations made in Manchester or London. Create a formal, regular summit structure between the Prime Minister and the First Ministers of the three devolved nations.
- Reopen the Financial Framework Dialogue: While a total overhaul of the Barnett formula might be off the table for this parliamentary session, Treasury teams must engage with Cardiff and Belfast to address specific funding gaps driven by social deprivation.
- Clarify the Role of Local vs National Power: Burnham must explicitly state that his drive for local municipal power in England will not be used to bypass or weaken the national authorities of the Senedd and Holyrood.
Treating the United Kingdom as a uniform block of regions is a recipe for constitutional disaster. If No 10 North is going to succeed, it must recognize that Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are countries, not counties.
