HEAVY on rhetoric, light on detail, Andy Burnham set out his vision for “change,” delivered symbolically from the People’s History Museum in Manchester this morning.

There was much to commend in the statement — a commitment to devolve power to the regions (“place first, party second”); to require “all government departments and agencies to support strategic and local authorities with staffing and resources”; to rebalance the education system and reinstate technical education and apprenticeships to meet the needs of young people; to develop the largest council-house building programme since the post-war period and to ensure that all procurement contracts carry out proper social value weighting to favour British manufacturing.

He rejected the “trickle-down model” of market economics and called for “good growth and hope” in every postcode, delivering consistency of service provision across the country.

The three broad priorities in his 10-year “mission” hint at the limitations of his vision:

Reform of essential utilities in which all parts of Britain can take “greater public control” of water, housing, energy, transport;

Reindustrialisation — where each region will be required to develop “clear and credible plans” to rebuild and safeguard sovereign manufacturing in critical sectors, citing steel, defence, energy, food and farming;

Regeneration — by consolidating “public and private investment at place level.”

The lack of detail justifies caution for the left. “Greater public control” stops short of renationalisation of core sectors, a minimum requirement to stop the fleecing of the British people, water pollution and the protection of vested interests in fossil fuels.  

Reindustrialisation will not happen by osmosis, nor will it be possible to deliver without a national industrial strategy and substantial public investment.  

Regeneration dependent on the “public/private partnership” redolent of the Blair/Brown governments is likely to deliver the same PFI rip-off currently impoverishing the NHS and education. The power that Burnham wishes to devolve will be largely in the hands of directly elected mayors who will have the power to over-rule local authorities with minimal scrutiny or accountability between elections. In turn these mayors will be vulnerable to corporate lobbying, especially from a construction sector which has driven large-scale council estate and town centre demolition and redevelopment in the face of huge community opposition.

While the implied devolution of the “Whitehall machine” to local government may be a good thing, what will it mean for civil servants and quango employees, thousands of whose jobs may be redeployed around the country?

How will Burnham’s vision fit with the proposals for local government reorganisation, which do not mandate regional mayors? Will the plans that have already been adopted be retained? We have already seen Reform-led councils mounting legal challenges to reorganisation proposals in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, with more anticipated.  

The lack of consistency in local government reorganisation is now augmented by uncertainty about the model the PM-in-waiting will push. His favoured regional mayoral model, removes rather than strengthens community control — witness Sadiq Khan’s decision to reduce the amount of affordable homes developers are required to deliver, in order to “kick-start” building in London.  

A new programme to build council homes at scale while welcomed needs to answer how it will be delivered given the lack of design and build expertise in local authorities and over-reliance on large-scale private developers who are entirely profit-driven. Will the emphasis shift from demolition to refurbishment and retrofitting the existing stock and empty homes to bring them back into use?  

The trade union movement and wider left must now pile on the pressure to ensure the lack of detail is not some devilish portent, but a promise of an end to neoliberalism as the first step to socialist renewal.