The Mayor condemned the Westminster system for hoarding power at the centre which ‘gives as little power away as possible’.
The Mayor of Greater Manchester has slammed a ‘dysfunctional Whitehall system’ for allowing northerners to be treated as second class citizens as he called for a radical rewiring of power in Britain.
Speaking at the Centre for Cities event at Labour Party conference, Burnham said that there was a ‘prevailing attitude within SW1 which thinks that the North can be ‘treated in a different way and treated as less and as second-class citizens’ by a political system that allows them to treat the north like second class citizens.
Burnham slammed the obscene decision by the Tories to all but scrap HS2 after Rishi Sunak confirmed last week at Conservative Party conference that the high speed rail link between Birmingham and Manchester would be scrapped.
The Mayor condemned the Westminster system for hoarding power at the centre which ‘gives as little power away as possible’.
He said: “If you’re serious about reducing regional inequality in Britain you have to be supportive of radical rewiring of the country.” Burnham reiterated his calls for a proportional voting system for the Commons, urging the Labour Party to support the move, while also backing an elected House of Lords.
Burnham also said English devolution could achieve so much more, with cities like Liverpool following Manchester in bringing busses under public control which he cited as a great example of what devolution could achieve.
He also highlighted how Manchester had been growing faster than the UK economy, ‘we’ve narrowed the productivity gap in London and we’re the only city in the north to do that’ he told attendees.
Asked about what he would do about soaring rents, Burnham said he supported a system of regulatory control of rents but stopped short of calling explicitly for rent caps.
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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