Since entering 10 Downing St, Britain’s new prime minister has travelled to the southeast, southwest and northwest of England, and to Scotland, spoken to more than a dozen world leaders and made a flurry of small but symbolic economic announcements: a tax cut on household electricity bills, a 2 pound cap on bus fares and a tax break for pubs.
“We are on borrowed time if we don’t get a move on,” newly appointed Housing Secretary Angela Rayner told the BBC. “This is a down payment within the first week that says, ‘We get it.’”
Burnham gathered Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants and regional mayors at “No, 10 North,” an outpost of the prime minister’s office in Manchester, 1265 kilometres northwest of London.
Burnham says he will work at least one day a week from the northern office, which will serve as the cockpit for his goal of spreading economic growth to “every post code” in the land.
Decentralising power and spreading wealth from southern England to post-industrial cities and depleted seaside towns is key to Burnham’s platform, and he told staff as he arrived at No.10 North: “This might be the best day of my life.”
Opposition politicians have called the northern office — housed for now in an office building shared with a branch of the cyberintelligence agency GCHQ — a gimmick. But Burnham said it will be “the nerve center for a rewired Britain".
Writing in The Guardian, he said that for decades too much “decision-making power has remained in London,” and struggling areas of the UK “have been unable to turn things around because they simply do not have the necessary power to do so".
No. 10 North “is about taking power down and placing it in the hands of people who can use it best,” he wrote.
Burnham became prime minister and leader of the governing Labour Party after his predecessor Keir Starmer was forced out after two years in office marred by missteps, scandals and plummeting popularity ratings.
Starmer floundered because he failed to deliver the economic growth he promised in his 2024 election campaign. Burnham says he will be different, but faces many of the same challenges, especially finding a way to reinvigorate an economy that has grown an average of less than 1.5% a year since 2009 and unearthing funds to restore frayed public services.
Foreign policy pressures mount quickly
Burnham, who has little foreign policy experience, also must deal with the same volatile world. He has signalled continuity with Starmer in key foreign policy areas. He reassured President Volodymyr Zelensky that UK support for Ukraine remains “resolute” and told Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen that Greenland’s future “should only be determined by the people of Greenland and Denmark", in reference to US President Donald Trump’s stated desire to take over the vast Arctic island.
He's also facing threatening new rhetoric from Iran. Tehran accused the UK of “complicity” in American aggression by allowing the US to use British bases for airstrikes on Iran and said it could face “consequences and repercussions".
Burnham has maintained Starmer’s policy of letting American forces use UK bases to hit targets involved in attacks on shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s threat came after Britain banned the powerful Revolutionary Guard and accused it of being behind a series of arson attacks on the Jewish community and Persian-language media outlets in the UK.
Britain’s Ministry of Defense said “the UK stands ready 24/7 to defend itself".
“The UK’s approach to the conflict remains the same – we are committed to defending our people, our interests and our allies, acting in accordance with international law and not getting drawn into the wider conflict,” it said in a statement.
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