Henry Zeffman: Andy Burnham offers a blueprint for his premiership

Image source, Getty Images By Henry Zeffman Chief political correspondent Published 19 minutes ago Andy Burnham tried and failed to become prime minister twice before. He is now three weeks away from moving into Downing Street. It was Burnham's decade away from Westminster as the mayor of Greater Manchester which ultimately delivered the prize which had previously eluded him. So it is little surprise that Burnham chose to give his first speech as the presumptive prime minister in Manchester. And it is little surprise that at the heart of Burnham's vision for the nation is using his approach in Greater Manchester - "Manchesterism" - as a blueprint for the rest of the country. Today offered more of a sense of what this would mean: principally a significant devolution of powers away from Westminster and to the kinds of office that less than two weeks ago Burnham still held. Take "Number 10 North", the new prime ministerial office based in Manchester whose creation was one of the most significant announcements of the speech. There are already lots of government offices outside of London, and under Rishi Sunak the Treasury set up a campus in Darlington . But what Burnham was describing here felt more significant than the relocation of staff. This No 10 North would have specific responsibility for the "biggest council housebuilding programme since the postwar period", he said, raising some questions about the role of the Ministry of Housing and perhaps suggesting that a wider shakeup of the machinery of government is in the offing. How exactly this will work would doubtless have been a subject for the media questions which Burnham declined to take. For all the vision, and do not underestimate how happy Labour MPs will be to hear a vision, there is plenty of detail to be filled in. As well as new powers for national civil servants based in Manchester, Burnham - as anticipated - vowed to give new powers to locally-elected leaders across the country, and he made clear that included new powers for leaders in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This, he said, would bring about the "biggest rebalancing of power" in political history. Burnham sets out plans to devolve power to regions with new 'No 10 North' in Manchester What are Andy Burnham's potential policies for No 10? Published 4 days ago Burnham's people: MPs and advisers in line for a job if he gains power Published 5 days ago This was billed as an economic speech. There was a promise to raise living standards for everyone, a commitment to reform business rates in order to support businesses like pubs, and an intriguing if vague hint of giving people "a bit extra" to cope with rising costs. Yet it felt like at its core this was really a speech about power and where it is exercised. Of course power is partly an economic question, but the first arguments Burnham made for devolving power related to political culture rather than economic growth. In this broader critique of the "broken" Westminster syste