Who is Andy Burnham? On Monday, he arrived in Westminster to be sworn in as the MP for Makerfield while Mathew Lawrence released The Productive State, a blueprint for Manchesterism that calls for more public control over failing utilities. The paper lands as Burnham is widely expected to seek to enter No 10 in a matter of weeks.
The essay says Britain has spent 40 years moving in the opposite direction, and argues that millions of households now pay a privatisation premium through rent, energy bills, water charges, transport fares and care. Lawrence describes the project as "a state that owns, invests and provides to make life affordable".
Mathew Lawrence and Manchesterism
Lawrence, who is close to Burnham and has worked with him on his thinking on public control of utilities, published the paper with Mainstream and framed it around a state that would cover "clean water, cheap energy, warm homes, reliable transport, built and run by institutions that answer to the public." Miatta Fahnbulleh called it "an important contribution to the debate on how we fix this, deliver the change that people are crying out for and start to rebuild our broken economy".
The essay argues that privatisation sits at the heart of the UK's growth and productivity struggles. It says the UK has lost control over the basics that make life more expensive, and that essential sectors cost more than comparable alternatives not because they deliver more, but because they are organised to extract more.
Thames Water and National Grid
The paper pushes for greater state intervention to protect the public from soaring costs and failing private companies, including taking failing utilities into administration and expanding public control. Burnham's allies have previously talked about a 10-year project to bring large parts of the water and energy sectors into public control, starting with Thames Water and eventually including energy transmission and supply companies, possibly including National Grid.
Lawrence stops short of backing blanket nationalisation likely to cost hundreds of billions, even as the paper argues for much greater state control. It says the government is forced to subsidise inflated costs with welfare transfers such as housing benefit or support with energy bills, while working people pay the price.
Burnham's political project now has a concrete paper behind it, and the unresolved issue is how far he will take these proposals if he seeks to enter No 10. For households facing the privatisation premium, the practical test is whether the blueprint becomes a staged programme for utilities, or stays a statement of intent.
