Manchesterism: collaboration, devolution and the limits of Whitehall

What does “Manchesterism” actually mean for the country and in particular how the centre of government interacts with local areas.

In this article, Andrew Laird shares some reflections following a Radical Reformers podcast conversation with Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Eve Holt.

Manchesterism has already come to encompass a wide range of ideas: collective self-belief; collaboration across boundaries; devolution and subsidiarity; greater social justice; and good growth rooted in people and place. 

All of these matter - but Manchesterism is not simply a list of policies developed in Greater Manchester, waiting to be rolled out across England. It is also a way of working.

As the latest episode of Radical Reformers is with Eve Holt, Head of Policy and Implementation at Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA) – I thought I would jot down a few thoughts on Manchesterism and how it might translate to a national stage.

Greater Manchester is obviously the home to pioneering public service reforms, such as the Wigan Deal and more recently the Live Well programme - but the word that returned throughout my conversation with Eve was collaboration.

Collaboration as the operating model

The GMCA is sometimes understood as another tier of government sitting above the ten local authorities. Eve describes something much more relational. Important decisions are made by the ten council leaders and the mayor together. This is purposefully built into the model.

Greater Manchester’s progress has therefore not come from creating one dominant regional institution that directs everybody else. It has come from developing the habit and discipline of working together, finding common ground and resolving differences.

As Eve puts it, the belief that Greater Manchester is stronger when it works collectively is its “secret sauce”.

That does not mean disagreement disappears. The ten boroughs contain different economies, communities, political traditions and priorities. There are inevitably difficult conversations behind closed doors. But Greater Manchester has become better at working through those differences rather than avoiding them.

Healthy conflict can produce better decisions when those involved remain committed to reaching a shared position. This is collaboration as a serious form of governance, not a softer word for agreement.

It is reinforced by Greater Manchester’s institutional geography. Local government, policing and health operate across a broadly shared city-region footprint. This makes it possible to convene partners around common priorities and to consider the connections between health, housing, employment, skills, transport, policing and economic growth.

Collaboration also extends beyond the statutory public sector. In our conversation, Eve emphasises the importance of businesses, universities, voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise organisations, and communities themselves.

The role of the GMCA is often to convene and enable this wider system rather than control it. It is the “conductor of the orchestra rather than the orchestra itself”.

That idea feels central to Manchesterism.

An enabling form of leadership

James Plunkett’s recent writing on enabling political leadership helps to explain why this matters. He contrasts enabling leadership with what he calls “vending machine government” i.e. a model in which politicians make promises, announce policies and then pull the levers of the state in the expectation that the promised outcomes will emerge.

The result is often a politics of “announceables” - new initiatives, pilots, funds, taskforces and programmes that can be presented as evidence of action. But many of the outcomes people care most about cannot simply be delivered from the centre.

Good health, safer communities, stronger families and thriving local economies emerge from the interaction of institutions, relationships, communities, environments and individual agency. They cannot be produced by a single department or programme. And certainly not just by continuously piloting new ideas without any join-up or shared-learning between the experiments.

An enabling leader therefore does something different. Rather than claiming to possess all the answers, they create the conditions in which others can act, collaborate and lead.

That description fits much of Eve’s account of Greater Manchester. The Mayor and combined authority provide direction, convening power and a shared story, but much of the work is carried out across councils, communities, public services and local organisations.

It is also why Manchesterism cannot be separated from collaboration. The model depends on leaders being willing to share agency, tolerate difference and accept that progress will often emerge from the system rather than from the centre.

Can Manchesterism survive Whitehall?

A Burnham administration could place greater emphasis on long-term missions (let’s not forget the current government tried that!), collaboration across departments (much easier said than done), community participation and the much closer integration of policy with implementation. It could move away from short-term announcements and towards sustained investment in outcomes. It could ask ministers and civil servants to organise around people’s lives rather than institutional boundaries.

Of course, all of this sounds great! But there are limits to how far a collaborative culture developed in a city region can simply be transferred into central government.

Whitehall departments have longstanding responsibilities, funding arrangements, professional cultures and lines of accountability. Ministers and Permanent Secretaries are judged primarily on the performance of their own departments. Budgets are allocated departmentally. Parliamentary scrutiny is organised departmentally. Risk is managed departmentally.

Collaboration may be encouraged, but the machinery repeatedly pulls people back towards separate institutional priorities.

This is not a criticism of civil servants. Many understand the limitations of the system and work extremely hard to overcome them. The problem is structural.

Housing sits in one department, health in another, employment support somewhere else and skills in another part of government. Yet, as everyone reading this will know, the person experiencing poor housing, ill health, unemployment and debt does not experience four separate policy issues. They experience one life.

National programmes arrive in places with different funding conditions, reporting frameworks, targets and timescales. Local organisations are then expected to assemble the pieces into something coherent.

Devolution as the practical expression of Manchesterism

This is why the most important national expression of Manchesterism will not be reforming Whitehall itself. It will be devolution.

This seems to be the solution Andy Burnham is already reaching for - devolve more power, budget, responsibility, accountability to local areas so collaboration becomes possible in local places - even if fragmentation remains embedded at the centre.

At the level of a city region, county, town or neighbourhood, organisations are dealing with the same people and many of the same interconnected challenges. They can see the relationships between housing, health, employment, crime, education and family life more clearly because they encounter the person and community behind the administrative categories.

They also have a practical incentive to collaborate. When one service fails, the consequences appear elsewhere in the local system - in hospitals, schools, homelessness services, policing, social care and the voluntary sector.

Devolution can create the conditions for organisations to pool resources, share responsibility and organise support around people rather than programmes.

But this must mean more than transferring isolated responsibilities from Whitehall departments. Simply relocating a fragmented programme does not make it place-based.

Places (and the partners within them) need meaningful control over funding, the freedom to combine budgets and the ability to agree long-term outcomes. Accountability must reward collective results rather than reinforce separate institutional interests.

Simon Kaye’s recent article on the tests a Burnham government will face makes an important related point - real devolution cannot mean reproducing Greater Manchester everywhere.

Different places have different geographies, identities and institutional histories. Some are dominated by a major city. Others are polycentric, rural or coastal. Some need stronger regional governance, while other decisions should sit at neighbourhood level.

Manchesterism should therefore offer lessons, not a single constitutional template.

That is entirely consistent with Eve’s argument in the podcast. Greater Manchester’s model is rooted in its own history: the cooperative movement, trade unionism, municipal leadership, industrial innovation and a powerful sense of civic confidence.

Other places should not be told to copy Manchester’s structures or political style. They should be given the freedom to find their own version.

The real test of a Burnham government

The test of a Burnham government will not be whether every Whitehall department starts to use the language of Manchesterism. Nor will it be whether Greater Manchester programmes are reproduced across the country.

The real test will be whether the new government is prepared to give power away:

• Can it transfer meaningful authority, money and decision-making closer to people?

• Can it allow places to combine resources around locally chosen priorities?

• Can it tolerate local variation rather than demanding centrally prescribed models?

• Can it trust local leaders, public servants, community organisations and citizens to develop their own solutions?

Andy Burnham’s government should certainly try to make Whitehall more collaborative – of course it should… But it’s more important task will be to make Whitehall less dominant.

To make the lack of collaboration in the centre less of a problem.

Andrew Laird

Chief Executive, Mutual Ventures

If you would like to discuss any of this further, please drop Andrew a message at andrew@mutualventures.co.uk.