Could This Be Britain's Next Prime Minister?

**Sam Fennick** (0:00)
Can moving power north fix Britain's economy?

**Andy Burnham** (0:03)
Number 10 North will be the nerve center of a rewired Britain.

**Emma Thackeray** (0:09)
That will take a lot of effort, and it's still not dealing with the bigger, gnarlier issues.

**Sam Fennick** (0:17)
It's World Business Report from the BBC World Service.
I'm Sam Fennick, Britain's likely next Prime Minister sets out his economic plans, and it starts with taking power away from London. America's top court blocks Donald Trump from sacking a governor of the Federal Reserve, and while everyone else in media is merging to get bigger, Comcast is breaking itself in two.
So, in three weeks, Britain is likely to have a new Prime Minister, and outside the UK, his name probably means little. Andy Burnham, a Cabinet Minister under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, until in 2017, he left Westminster to run Greater Manchester, a big city region in England's north. Now, Sakir Starmer is standing down, and Mr Burnham is the front runner to replace him. Unchallenged, he could be in Downing Street by the 20th of July. So today, on Monday, he set out his economic plans, not in London, but in Manchester, not very far from where I am sitting now. His pitch, spread growth beyond the capital and start where he's standing.

**Andy Burnham** (1:34)
The change will be the biggest change in our lifetimes to the way the country is run. We will create a more streamlined state with a clearer purpose, to power up all parts of the country and put a laser-like focus on growth and regeneration, good growth.
The change will be driven through the Prime Minister's office in an extended operation based here in Manchester.

**Sam Fennick** (2:05)
So let's talk to Fiona Sincotta, Senior Market Analyst at Stone X. She is here in the UK. Good growth then, based in Manchester is the promise. Got a round of applause.
He's told the city that he'll stick with the government's borrowing rules. Now, can he spend money across the UK, but also keep that promise of those fiscal rules? Does one of them have to give, do you think?

**Fiona Sincotta** (2:29)
Well, it's definitely going to be a challenge because, I mean, the UK is a deeply centralised economy and London and the South East are actually the only regions that generate more tax than they spend. So that just, I think, really highlights the extent of the challenge that Burnham faces. So, you know, it does mean that this would have to be quite a slow process and a gradual process, targeted very much at the places that sort of have the greatest capacity to deliver.
Pretty much a bottom-up approach, I would say, but I think it does feel that, you know, given the fiscal constraints that there are, this may not be able to achieve rapidly what he would need to achieve in the time.

**Sam Fennick** (3:13)
Well, stay with us, Fiona, because the real test of all this isn't on the trading screens that you've been looking at all day. It's whether it changes anything for businesses actually trying to grow. Now, the main plank of Andy Burnham's economic plan is this word devolution. For decades, power in Britain has been focused in London. Whitehall decides how money is spent, what gets built and where it gets built. Devolution means handing some of that to the regions, to local mayors and councils, to the people who know their own patch.
Andy Burnham's bet is that decisions made closer to home will grow the economy faster than the ones made hundreds of miles away. He calls it rewired Britain.

**Andy Burnham** (3:58)
It will only be based here. The job of No 10 North will be to make power flow into the Midlands, into the South West, into the East of England and, yes, into London as I said before, as much as into the North East, Yorkshire and the Humber and here in the North West. It will be about offering new opportunities to extend devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by taking power deeper down.
I'll get this, number 10 North will be the nerve centre of a rewired Britain.

**Sam Fennick** (4:36)
Well, there you go. It's a good line, isn't it? And it got another round of applause. But does it reach small businesses under the railway arches in Manchester? Hip Pop is a soft drinks company based in Manchester. Emma Thackeray started it six years ago. I asked her if her business has benefited from devolution.

**Emma Thackeray** (4:55)
We've received funding support, financial support, from the Greater Manchester Combined Authority to develop that manufacturing side of the business. So that's money that has helped our business grow and has come about as a result of devolution.