Andy Burnham is the second politician in British history to use a major metro mayoralty as the launchpad to No. 10. The first, of course, was Boris Johnson. And while Boris’s journey to No. 10 – via an era-defining referendum and constitutional crisis – might have been dismissed as an anomaly, there’s now a decent case that the political proving ground for national leadership is shifting away from Westminster and out to our cities and regions.
This is not just about the big personalities – though Johnson and Burnham both have them. The emerging power of the mayoral seat in English politics lies in its combination of expanding budgets and responsibilities and an institutional distance from Westminster.
Mayors are starting to look and act like regional CEOs without having to wear all the unpopular and divisive whole-of-government decisions that come with a ministerial post in a government department. Indeed, Burnham made a virtue of taking aim at his Labour colleagues’ decisions from his northern throne.
Increasingly, mayoralties are becoming a training ground for executive delivery that Westminster struggles to replicate.
Consider the contrast between a rising MP and a Metro Mayor. A talented MP may spend years participating in tightly whipped, abstract parliamentary debates, then, ascending to junior minister, delivering ‘lines to take’ and managing departmental siloes and arcane write rounds – battling with the Treasury for DEL flexibilities or answering pre-arranged questions at the dispatch box.
Or worse – they may never have run anything larger than a constituency office before being handed the keys to a multi-billion-pound department, and maybe one day, the country.
In contrast, metro mayors increasingly operate as a functional Chief Executive. They balance resource and capital budgets, create development corporations and delivery vehicles, forge consensus across fractious local authorities, build coalitions with universities and private sector leaders, and sell their place as a destination for investment. Most importantly, they must plan and deliver tangible infrastructure and public services in a holistic way that serves a major population centre.
We’re still early doors on English devolution, but the real gamechanger has been fiscal autonomy. Through the “Trailblazer” single settlements pioneered by Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, the old model of regional leaders begging Whitehall for specific, ring-fenced grants with tightly drafted T&Cs is on its way out. The trailblazer is now becoming the baseline.
Advanced combined authorities will get flexible multi-year funding. This effectively grants them super-department level status at spending reviews, letting them decide how to allocate their capital between competing priorities.
With active policy shifts toward retention of business rates and income tax revenues, mayors are being given further ‘Treasury-lite’ autonomy over revenue-generation and spending.
And these muscles are being flexed. The rollout of Greater Manchester’s Bee Network has been a case in point. While central government has spent years wrestling with national rail strategies, Burnham used mayoral powers to re-regulate the region’s bus network under a unified, publicly controlled system. By capping fares and integrating ticketing across buses and trams, the authority proved that regional oversight could deliver faster, more reliable public services with a regional identity.
And while the Adult Education Budget (AEB) remains chronically underfunded, local control has given combined authorities a direct lever over regional economic growth. Combined authorities are aligning local skills budgets with local employer needs, co-designing courses with industry, colleges and universities, and changing how money is spent to aggressively tackle in-work poverty and the regional productivity gap.
Through Mayoral Development Corporations (MDCs), combined authorities are actively utilizing brownfield housing funds and land-acquisition powers to speed through the planning system. They are stepping in where central government housing targets have stalled, allocating massive capital funds directly to regional regeneration priorities that blend commercial and social value.
In short, mayoralties matter.
For businesses, this structural shift requires a rethink of corporate affairs strategy. Historically, companies with national ambitions or major infrastructure pipelines focused on SW1A, Holyrood and the Senedd – cultivating relationships with departments, ministers, and parliamentarians.
But now any business trying to attract or deploy capital, train a workforce, scale an innovative technology, or sell their wares would be well advised to think about the mayors and authorities on their doorstep. This is the thinking that lies behind Blakeney opening a new regional office in the Midlands, building on our presence in Scotland. We are also plotting an expansion to the northwest, as the gravity in UK politics shifts.
Mayors are no longer just regional stakeholders; they are the people holding the purse strings today – and maybe the keys to No.10 tomorrow.
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