One of the last things on Keir Starmer’s list of priorities might be giving significant extra power to Andy Burnham.
The Greater Manchester mayor is seen as the person most likely to challenge the embattled prime minister, if he can find a route into the Commons first.
Yet supporters of devolution are hoping Starmer might agree to do exactly that in the coming months.
A report published on Monday by Labour Together, the Starmerite thinktank, calls for ministers to go much further than they now plan on devolution.
The report, written by JP Spencer, Labour Together’s director of devolution policy, calls for mayors to be able to appoint commissioners to oversee a wide range of public services, from health to criminal justice. These commissioners would mirror the work being done by police and crime commissioners, a role introduced by the coalition government to oversee local policing.
The report argues: “This will allow places to deliver public services in a different way, more accountable to their users via their democratic representatives.”
At its most radical, this vision could even mean the abolition of large numbers of government departments. Before he left government, the former prime minister Gordon Brown launched an initiative he called “total place” to refocus government’s resources away from traditional departments and towards local authorities.
Labour Together’s report also calls for big changes to the way mayors’ budgets are set, calling for a version of the Barnett formula that already sets funding for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland based on the UK government’s spending plans.
The government is not going to back those funding proposals, some of which have already been rejected by Starmer and his chancellor, Rachel Reeves.
But Steve Reed, the newly appointed local government secretary and a close ally of the prime minister, is one of many at the top of government who believe they should go further than the changes included in the devolution bill, which is going through parliament.
Reed has not been in position long, but is understood to be open to the idea of handing over much more power to mayors, whether in health, education or criminal justice. He believes that doing so will allow locally elected politicians to emulate the “co-operative council” reforms he launched as leader of Lambeth council, which gave local people the power to design the services they needed.
Giving powers to Burnham might be low on the list of Starmer’s priorities, but there is both a policy and political upside to doing so.
Not only could the government save money, but it could also hand over the responsibility for some of England’s most challenged public services to other authorities.
Labour ministers might be reluctant to bolster mayors from opposing parties, not least Luke Campbell in Hull and Andrea Jenkyns in Lincolnshire, both of whom represent Reform UK.
Spencer argues however that doing so might actually help puncture Reform’s growing strength on the national stage by tackling the root causes of voters’ frustration with mainstream politics.
“Behind disenchantment with traditional politics is a loss of agency,” he writes.
“Voters are angry, and they are right to be. Change is effectively ‘done to’ people and communities with little power to adapt to it.”
