If you wanted to create a drinking game based on Andy Burnham’s analysis of the Makerfield by-election campaign, the mention of the phrase “King of the North” would be the trigger to get everyone absolutely wasted. An extra sip of beer when KOTN is prefixed with “so-called”, three sips for “self-styled”, and a shot of tequila when distributed in a patronizing northern accent by a centrist comedian who belatedly discovers what authenticocracy means. On the one hand, the twisting of Burnham’s regionalist baton is fair enough. It is the duty of commentators to cast aspersions on the airs and graces of our supposed leaders (though I have often been tempted, through endless sneers over the last few weeks about Burnham “based on the vibe“and”egocentric” come closer, I shout: have any of you ever met… a politician?)
But while healthy skepticism about performative bluff is all well and good, it’s important to note that Burnham’s investment in what might be called the Northern Idea isn’t just a PR play. Indeed, the Makerfield saga – and the Burnhamite rise to power that seems certain to flow from it – is arguably the most significant event in the history of British regionalism since the spectacular collapse of the Red Wall at the 2019 general election. Can we analyze professional northerners and their parodies to reveal a more serious side to Burnham’s regional blurring, one that is deeply connected to questions of transference, identity, and popular sovereignty?
To start at surface level, it’s true that there was a lot of pro-North rhetoric in Makerfield’s campaign (as indeed there was during Burnham’s last decade as mayor of Greater Manchester). At first, Burnham’s team worked up a graphic based on the classic Northern Soul “Keep the Faith” logo, with “CHANGE LABOUR” replacing the original slogan. Meanwhile, some Labor leaflets came in the form of a cardboard 7in vinyl disc, with a Burnham cartoon on the front and “NORTHERN SOULS STICK TOGETHER” on the back. As if to dispel any lingering ambiguity, in the run-up to voting day itself, Burnham released a video with the caption “The North is rising again! (strong arms emoji)”, and a series of talking heads gibberish in its opening sign: “The North Star leads the way”.
But branding is branding, and strange as it may be, it is always responding to the most significant impulses in the popular imagination. As well as channeling a very non-stellar sense of fun – what sociologist Paul Gilroy calls a “cheerful” political culture, Burnham’s northern soul routine was tapping into a mixture of anger and hope for regional inequality and its remedies that is deeply felt in the Wigan area and beyond. Indeed, it was when Burnham first touched this emotion, in his wake Speech in St. Peter’s Square end of 2020 (“The North is fed up of being pushed… we won’t be pushed anymore”), that he first earned his sobriquet “King of the North” and began to be seen as Labour’s next man.
Most importantly, beneath the slogans, there is an extremely strong and well-crafted foundation for Burnham’s regionalist vision. While commentators are still trying to figure out whether “Starmerism” still exists almost two years after a Starmer premiere, we can clearly discern the outlines of Burnhamite regionalism by reading the impassioned, opinionated and often idiosyncratic arguments in Head North: A call for a more equal BritainBurnham’s book-length manifesto published in collaboration with Liverpool Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram in 2024.
Although it is not a work of literature, Head north goes beyond the typical politician’s “book of ideas” formula to offer a series of radical proposals for constitutional reform. Acknowledging the full extent of the North-South divide and its detrimental impact on British socio-economic development, this belligerent text culminates in a ten-point plan calling for the abolition of the House of Lords and its replacement with an elected Senate of the Regions and Nations, the introduction of a German-style constitution to guarantee the fair distribution of German-style, “basic” funds. revising the voting system and empowering regional leaders to shape fiscal policy.
If such policies, if implemented, will be able to overturn Labour’s continuous decline in the post-industrial areas of the North and Midlands it is the proverbial million dollar question. Combined with Burnham’s rhetoric during the Makerfield campaign about the need to firmly reject neoliberalism and its apocalypticism “four horsemen” (deindustrialization, privatization, deregulation, and austerity), these recommendations at least recognize that a collapse in living standards and a long-term crisis of sovereignty in the British regions is the root of the problem – and that tackling these issues head-on is the key to national and party revival.
But it may be that a Burnham prime minister will arrive too late in the day to stop the rot about Labor and its former northern heartlands. Although he ended up with a larger majority in Makerfield than many expected (suggesting that the rise of reform in the north has clear limits), commentators are surely right to suggest that Labor will continue to likely to fight to avoid reform in Makerfield-style seats, even in a successful general election campaign.
An early test of the prospect of Labour’s northern revival will, of course, come with the Greater Manchester mayoral election next month. With Burnham’s highly effective personal brand out of the way (unless another Northern Soul is quickly found to replace him), both Reform and the Greens are likely to improve their Makerfield performances. And that contest will be in classic Burnhamland. Away from the metropolitan northwest, where Burnhamism is political terroirThe reforms have built an arguably unplayable hegemony in much of the post-industrial North and Midlands for some time (for example in County Durham, where polling shows a likely to take full control of the Reformation in the next general election).
All this is without even mentioning the tremendous difficulties Burnham will face in maneuvering a radical regionalist agenda through parliament when – or rather if – he becomes prime minister. It would seem a remote possibility that replacing the Lords with a Senate of the Regions and Nations, for example, would go through without a problem. Never underestimate the power and instinct for self-preservation of the English establishment (or, for that matter, the pettiness and conservatism of Skeptical Labor Right Burnham).
And yet it would be equally foolish to let skepticism take center stage at what is ultimately a moment of great opportunity for the North and the country as a whole. Barring a major upset, in a short interlude Great Britain is likely to have its first fully Northern prime minister since Harold Wilson. This is a significant fact in itself, of course. But given Burnham’s apparent commitment to some form of major renovation of Britain’s archaic national structures, it begins to look like a break in the centuries. Ukanian regime. Feel the vibrations and the real world moving beneath them.
(Further reading: Makerfield Days)
