A Postindustrial columnist and scholar explores deindustrialization across the pond and the challenges British leaders face when confronting dilemmas not unfamiliar to Postindustrial Communities here.
The same week Manchester, United Kingdom Mayor Andy Burnham made a surprisingly swift return to Parliament and on to what looks like a Labour Party coronation as leader and ascension to prime minister, The Atlantic magazine ran a feature story: How Britain Became as Poor as Mississippi.
The story chronicled a 20-year decline from a robust, albeit London-centric, economy—that had bypassed economic powerhouse Germany in median income — to a nation of stagnant growth and declining living standards.
A decline sparked by the 2008 financial crisis, then accelerated by Brexit and retreat from Europe—a self-inflicted economic wound that is estimated to have cost Britain a 6 to 8% loss in GDP per capita—bringing its output per person to the ignominious level of America’s poorest state.
But this overall relative decline in living standards masks the UK’s even more politically salient economic feature — some of the largest geographic economic disparities among Western democracies.
Britain’s ongoing voter angst and revolving door at Number 10 Downing Street (seven prime ministers in 10 years) appear clearly linked to the yawning and growing economic gulfs between the UK’s few economic hotspots of London, University towns like Oxford and Cambridge, and the hollowed-out manufacturing and mining communities of the UK’s North and peripheral regions.
These are the same struggling communities—the former working class once Labour-friendly “red wall” of counties–that voted their anger and alienation via Brexit in 2016, and went strong for the right-wing nationalist and anti-immigrant Reform Party in very recent local elections.
Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham (Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Among these ailing communities, one bright spot of economic transformation is Burnham’s Manchester. The city–birthplace of the Industrial Revolution that had fallen, like so many Midlands and Northern English towns, on hard times– was newly governed by a Greater Manchester Regional Mayoralty that Andy Burnham won in 2017, leaving Parliament and London behind.
Credited with clarity in communicating what he would do and why, and new and tangible delivery on the basics of public services—like making the bus system work—Greater Manchester on Burnham’s watch has enjoyed a rare British economic renaissance.
So seeking to return to Parliament and challenge a floundering Keir Starmer, Burnham (already branded the “King-of-the North” for his Covidera North country advocacy) won a newly-cleared MP seat in Makerfield with an unheard of 55% majority.
Victory in Makerfield, as one of the dozens of struggling communities that had been responding to Reform’s resentment politics— sent a message: Burnham was the man to both beat back Reform and deliver new economic opportunity for the UK’s left-behind communities.
As Scottish MP Zubir Ahmed put it, explaining to the BBC the support for Burnham among Labour MPs: “So many people in the country feel disconnected from this place (London). Economically disconnected. Politically disconnected”. Ahmed noted that Burnham had delivered for Manchester. He connected with the people of Makerfield. And would likely deliver for other similar parts of Northern England and constituencies like his own in Scotland.
Given Britain’s myriad economic and social woes- lagging wages, low growth, crumbling infrastructure, overstressed welfare state—any prime minister’s ability to turn things around may be limited. As well as their time in office if they don’t.
Residents of ailing mill, mining and manufacturing communities across the UK have been promised “big change” before.
From Brexit, to former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s pledge to “level up” the North, to the sweeping mandate for Labour just two years ago to take power from the Conservatives after 14 years of austerity, economic and political dysfunction.
Promises that, unfulfilled, have only fueled voter anger, cynicism, and the desperate search for scapegoats like immigrants that undergirds the appeal of Nigel Farage and his Reform Party.
So far, Burnham has hit the right notes.
Asked if his election victory in Makerfield was a “stepping-stone”, he said no, it was a “touchstone”. Meaning the test will be tangible improvements in the life of residents of Makerfield and communities like it.
Certainly, his own political prospects and the prospects of British politics returning to some form of stability depend on it.
