Will Andy Burnham’s model of subsidiarity work for a broken Britain?

Even with the World Cup going on, and Donald Trump lauding an Iran peace deal, there always going to be just the one story this week – Andy Burnham and the Makerfield byelection. No-one quite knew how the drama was going to play out but, as Burnham walked out of the polling centre yesterday with a thumping majority, all is now in place for a Labour leadership challenge and a major reset of the British political narrative. At least that’s the hope of just about everyone. What last night’s result might actually deliver is a little more nuanced, and far more difficult to predict.

At this stage it’s not worth speculating too much about how a leadership challenge will pan out – on the one hand the current unpopularity of Sir Keir Starmer and the many rumbles from across the benches at Westminster that it’s time for him to go is what has given prime impetus to Mr Burnham’s ambitions. Set against this, there are also significant concerns within the Labour party about what sort of direction a Burnham premiership might take our country in, and what sort of political regime might emerge from his particular construct of liberal socialism.

Across the day the media has been thick with phrases like ‘early departure, ’smooth transition’ and ‘pulling together’ – alongside lots of optimistic speculation about a ‘new path for Britain’ and ‘returning to old values’. So far Sir Keir has said nothing to suggest he’s going to do anything less than try and fight off Burnham’s challenge, and he’s even managed to call on a group of wealthy donors to fund his survival campaign war chest. Given all the dramas and political machinations that have preceded this moment it’s tempting to presume that Sir Keir’s immovable object will prove no match for Andy Burnham’s irresistible force, but politics is a deeply unpredictable and fickle occupation, and British political history is littered with forgotten legislators who became convinced greatness awaited them, only to find it just wasn’t going to be their day.

Given the tone and language of Mr Burnham’s victory speech last night, it was clear that he is not planning to wait too long before mounting a leadership challenge. Makerfield, he said, was going to be a “turning point” in British politics and warned that the current trajectory of the Labour party was doomed.

“It is our last chance to change, but we’re going to take it, aren’t we?” he said.

“We are going to take that opportunity, and we are going to lay out a new path for Britain.”

What Mr Burnham has in mind is already clear from the way in which he re-set his political career and objectives in 2016, when he unexpectedly pulled away from the impressive prime ministerial CV he’d built for himself, resigned from the shadow cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn and decided to contest the new Greater Manchester mayoralty. No doubt in the decades to come – and certainly if Mr Burnham does make it into No.10 – academics will churn out tomes analysing the motivation and motives of Burnham’s reversal out of the Westminster enclave. Not least because if his subsequent career does actually lift Britain out of the deep trough it has sunk into, the theory of Burnhamite governance will have become an historically important template for how to transform any nation’s fortunes in the contemorary era.

Whether he intended it or no, when Andy Burnham became the first mayor of Greater Manchester on 5th May 2017, he achieved something that many Westminster politicians lacked – he gained executive authority over a place.

On the day he received 63% of the vote, winning majorities in all ten of Greater Manchester’s boroughs. In his mayoral victory speech, he said that “[politics] has been too London-centric for too long … Greater Manchester is going to take control. We are going to change politics and make it work better for people.” Although the powers of metro mayors in England are modest by international standards, Burnham spotted astutely that being responsible for infrastructure and local prosperity critical services such as transport, housing, planning and economic development could create a narrative of governance with the power to shift the historic dominance of Westminster and London over the economic and social prosperity of Britain.

(According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Britain is one of the most financially cerntralised countries in the developed world.)

When the COVID pandemic hit in 2020 Burnham’s very public disagreements with Boris Johnson’s government over lockdown restrictions and financial support for Manchester not only made him a national figure but set in motion a profound debate about local autonomy and regionalism, as opposed to centralised government. This is quite critical as British political history and policies of governance have been built on assumptions that regional matters are subservient to national priorities, and that local issues and demands feed into the larger ferment of national-based policymaking.  What Burnham has ignited is a fundamental debate not only about this flow of legislative action, but about the primary functions of government itself. It has even already given rise to its own moniker – Manchesterism.

As Mayor of Manchester Mr Burnham has argued for a decentralised economic model that empowers local communities to shape their own infrastructure, and in particular he believes that local-run utility and health systems are more efficient and public-serving that those controlled centrally. He has even said himself that he champions “subsidiarity” as the core philosophy for devolving power in the UK. Given Burham’s Catholic upbringing and faith, it’s not really any surprise to hear that word mentioned, as it’s a concept that has been embedded in Catholic Social Teaching for more than a century, and can even trace its roots back to the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas.

For Catholics, subsidiarity is the organising principle that matters should always be handled at the lowest levels needed for action and only get referred up the ladder when resolutions cannot be found. At its deepest level the Catholic concept of subsidiarity even goes one further than structured political governance, stating that the start point for effective social action should not even be with legislators at all, but with individuals.

This notion found a particular voice in Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo anno:

“Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them. [§79]”

Published on 15 May 1931, Pius was obviously deeply concerned about the growing conflict between monolithic state communism and stark capitalist ideologies, but his plea for the good of the individual human person to be the core of political decision-making and planning not only stands but has a new relevance and urgency.

(It also has a lateral – but equally important – manifestation in the many discussions that the Catholic Church has been having in recent years about ecclesial subsidiarity and synodality.)

Back in the debris of Makerfield, Andy Burnham has been uncompromising in his determination to remould the British political system into one that is far less London-centric, less hierarchical and regionally devolved in its decision-making. He even spoke of a “Makerfield test” that would “ensure the places Westminster has neglected will now get fairness”. More broadly he also spoke of “turning away from the path” to the “divide, dark politics” of the USA towards a new era of consensual, negotiated politics with a far greater degree of equity for all.

These are powerful – indeed universally agreed – sentiments, but how such ideals will play out in the murky, ruthless world of contemporary British politics is another matter entirely. If Burham does indeed now launch a leadership challenge, he will have no trouble in a deeply divided Labour party in securing the required 81 nominations, but Starmer is a fighter and is very unlikely to be persuaded to go easily. Historically the Labour party has also had a strong aversion to regicide, and no Labour PM has ever been forced from office. So, any contest is likely going to be bitter, messy and unpleasant.

If Mr Burham is looking for guidance on how best to navigate the coming weeks and months, a quick chat with Pope Leo wouldn’t be such a bad idea. Addressing a meeting of the International Catholic Legislators Network last September, Leo urged lawmakers “to work for a world where power is tamed by conscience, and law is at the service of human dignity,” and he also emphasised that the chief means for government leaders “to build harmonious and peaceful civil societies” is to “invest in the family. . .‘a small but genuine society, and prior to all civil society’ (quoting Rerum Novarum, 9).”

In a pontificate that is already delivering some welcome surprises, Pope Leo’s interventions in the debate about the limits of government are not only apposite and refreshing but hopefully might even in some way eventually find their way into the dusty corridors of Westminster, if Mr Burnham has any part in it.

Joseph Kelly is a Catholic writer and public theologian