{"id":1064866,"date":"2026-07-03T00:59:40","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T00:59:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1064866\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T00:59:40","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T00:59:40","slug":"henri-murison-its-time-to-roll-out-the-manchester-miracle-across-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1064866\/","title":{"rendered":"Henri Murison: It’s time to roll out the ‘Manchester miracle’ across Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Henri Murison, Chief Executive of Northern Powerhouse Partnership, argues that Burnham\u2019s latest devolution plans amount to a political revolution<\/p>\n

‘Andy\u2019s speech represents nothing short of a revolution.’<\/p>\n

Henri Murison is Chief Executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership and a policy leader whose work over the past decade has been closely tied to the evolution of devolution and regional growth policy in Greater Manchester. He has worked at the intersection of business, local government and national policy, drawing heavily on the experience of Greater Manchester\u2019s transformation to make the case for deeper and more effective devolution across the North of England.<\/strong><\/p>\n

That perspective is shaped by direct involvement in the development of the Northern Powerhouse agenda, and by close engagement with the leaders and institutions that helped turn Greater Manchester into the UK\u2019s most advanced city-region model of devolved governance and sustained economic growth.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Here he writes for the Manchester Evening News on Andy Burnham’s plans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This week, Andy Burnham set out his stall here in Manchester at the People\u2019s History Museum. This newspaper, the Manchester Evening News, described it on its front page as nothing short of Burnham\u2019s Revolution – and I am inclined to agree. For the last decade I have been trying to do a much more modest version of what Andy is now seeking to achieve: learning the lessons of Greater Manchester and identifying the opportunities in other parts of the North to pull off similarly dramatic improvements. Not only what you can see on the skyline, but in people\u2019s everyday lives and living standards.<\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for the latest on Greater Manchester’s politics in our newsletter<\/strong><\/p>\n

Because what Andy set out on Monday was more than just another speech about devolution. It was an attempt to take the lessons Greater Manchester has learned over the past two decades and apply them across the country.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Andy Burnham(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n

When George Osborne, then Chair of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, appointed me as the organisation’s inaugural director, I felt acutely what a privilege it was to work with the late Sir Howard Bernstein and the then Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese.<\/p>\n

What they achieved here in economic terms, with the fastest productivity growth of any city region over the last twenty years, has without exaggeration been termed the Manchester miracle.<\/p>\n

However, as much as their collective vision and determination was a force of nature, the real lesson is not that Greater Manchester is unique but that it can, and has, been replicated.<\/p>\n

The mayoral model, which George Osborne as Chancellor insisted upon in return for devolving powers such as bus franchising, has since been successfully applied in city regions near and far. In Liverpool, despite some of the most challenging circumstances imaginable, Mayor Steve Rotherham has overseen a genuine success story. After becoming the first Mayor, he had to establish the city region authority with little institutional history beyond the former Merseyside transport authority.<\/p>\n

Yet he has been able to deliver a well-run organisation with strong leadership, despite not benefitting from Greater Manchester\u2019s long history of collaboration and strong institutions.<\/p>\n

The book Steve and Andy wrote together has become required reading for journalists trying to understand where this agenda might be heading. Chris Mason, the BBC\u2019s Political Editor, re-read it on his journey north from London ahead of Monday\u2019s speech, revisiting the policy ideas and details developed by the the soon to be Prime Minister from in his years away from Westminster.<\/p>\n

Andy\u2019s speech delivered on Monday draws heavily on the thinking of one of Manchester\u2019s greatest champions, Lord Jim O\u2019Neill of Gatley, who I also had the privilege of working for during his time as chair of the Partnership. The Cities Growth Commission he led over a decade ago argued that the North could be greater than the sum of its parts. His vision for not only Greater Manchester but the wider \u2018ManSheffLeedsPool\u2019, will be significantly advanced by what Andy has proposed.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

A view of the skyline in Manchester City Centre. (Image: James Speakman\/PA Wire)<\/p>\n

Take employment support. Over a decade ago, Greater Manchester pioneered the Working Well programme under which the city region was paid by results for helping people into work. It was an example of central government rewarding regional leadership for joining up funding streams rather than operating through fragmented Whitehall departments. Mechanisms like this will now be strengthened and developed further.<\/p>\n

The same applies to skills. By devolving more powers, he can remove many of the barriers that stood in the way of him delivering his Greater Manchester Baccalaureate because he did not control all the necessary levers. That principle also runs through his proposals on re-industrialisation and his case for building more council homes. It is a vision of state intervention which is bottom up rather than top down.<\/p>\n

The cumulative effect of these changes will be to make Greater Manchester less of an ongoing financial cost to government and to be able to stand on its own two feet. Today, higher levels of poverty and worklessness mean higher levels of welfare spending, while the poorer health outcomes that come with greater levels of deprivation place greater pressure on the NHS. Investing locally to reduce those costs ultimately benefits taxpayers across the whole country.<\/p>\n

That is why Andy\u2019s speech represents nothing short of a revolution. Ideas which were once regarded as heresy, accepted by governments only as pilot schemes, are becoming orthodoxy. The British state is being re-wired and Andy is the sparky.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Andy Burnham(Image: Peter Byrne\/PA Wire)<\/p>\n

Yet one important facet of that revolution was absent from the speech: fiscal devolution – who gets to spend the taxes we pay and who benefits when those tax receipts increase.<\/p>\n

Take the proposed underground station at Piccadilly for Northern Powerhouse Rail services towards Liverpool via Manchester Airport and east towards Yorkshire. It has the potential to attract businesses, create better-paid jobs and unlock housing development which will all generate significant additional tax revenues. Yet under the current system, almost all those additional revenues will flow straight back into the Treasury.<\/p>\n

If Greater Manchester is expected to help part fund the station, it can only do so from its existing grants and the limited business rate revenues it currently retains, rather than sharing in the much larger tax receipts the investment will generate.<\/p>\n

Instead, the current Chancellor has proposed allowing places to retain a share of the additional tax revenue generated through growth, including income tax. That would allow city regions including Greater Manchester to contribute significantly to major projects like an underground station at Piccadilly, confident that they will share in the long-term rewards. Our Prime Minister-in-waiting hasn\u2019t yet confirmed he will support that proposal, but given he has argued for it himself, I suspect a re-commitment will come once he takes office.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Henri Murison(Image: Manchester Evening News)<\/p>\n

No 10 North must be up and running in the early days of Andy Burnham\u2019s new government. Unlocking growth right across the country will require drawing on the talent and experience of those who negotiated Greater Manchester\u2019s devolution settlement and delivered the most ambitious model of English devolution we have yet seen.<\/p>\n

The revolution will be Andy Burnham\u2019s contribution to Makerfield. It will also be his enduring legacy to Greater Manchester, having taken the region from strength to strength while renewing his promise to the North: to create a genuine counterweight to London across both sides of the Pennines.<\/p>\n

But he must remain restless. The transformation of Manchester and Salford city centre will continue with increasing ambition, but it cannot not be enough. As our next Prime Minister, he must give Greater Manchester the backing it needs to make another great leap in productivity, underpinning more job creation and higher wages wherever people live across the city region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Henri Murison, Chief Executive of Northern Powerhouse Partnership, argues that Burnham\u2019s latest devolution plans amount to a political…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1064867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[8813],"tags":[131227,748,393,4884,11564,104653,2465,80438,16,15],"class_list":["post-1064866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manchester","tag-andy-burnham-mp","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-great-britain","tag-greater-manchester-combined-authority","tag-greater-manchester-mayor","tag-manchester","tag-northern-powerhouse","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116853341414989010","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1064866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1064866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1064867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1064866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1064866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1064866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}