UK PM Burnham centralises No 10 power to push economic devolution
New British Prime Minister Andy Burnham is moving to strengthen the executive centre to wrest economic control from the Treasury and force through a historic redistribution of power across the UK.
Andy Burnham has begun his tenure as British prime minister by moving to strengthen the executive power of Downing Street. His first major economic intervention was a VAT cut on energy bills, but his broader agenda targets the structure of the British state itself.
Before taking office, Burnham identified the overcentralisation of power as a root cause of the country’s economic malaise. To fix this, he is first reinforcing the very centre he aims to decentralise, a strategic move to overcome institutional inertia and break the Treasury’s traditional monopoly on economic policymaking.
The appointment of Louise Haigh as first secretary of state is central to this strategy. She will run the Cabinet Office specifically to enforce the prime minister’s agenda. Haigh has called for a "proper beefed-up economic unit" in No 10, signalling a direct rebalancing of power away from the new chancellor, John Healey.
Healey is an experienced Whitehall operator, but Burnham’s camp does not view him as a political threat capable of building a rival power base. The move to build up No 10’s economic capacity is partly a correction of the directionless operation left by his predecessor, Sir Keir Starmer, whose Downing Street was thinly resourced and overly reliant on a small cadre of special advisers.
Previous reforms creating elected mayoralties failed to grant genuine fiscal control. The Treasury has historically blocked local financial autonomy, fearing profligacy. By asserting central authority, Burnham hopes to overcome this resistance and deliver what he describes as an epoch-defining redistribution of power.
A key indicator of his success will be the proposed "No 10 North". If it functions as a genuine shift in political gravity rather than a symbolic gesture, it will signal a tangible restructuring of the UK economy. Burnham is also pushing to build a "preventive state" to make early interventions and avoid "paying for failure" later, a model that will require unprecedented interdepartmental coordination.
