Scottish local government needs more than a mirror of Manchester’s mayor

‘Manchester-ism’ is Andy Burnham’s big solution for all the country’s ills. In his first major policy speech since returning to Westminster, he pledged to create a “Number 10 North” which would become the “nerve centre of a rewired Britain”.

This new Britain will be focused on “growth and regeneration”, moving away from a model of governance that “hasn’t been working for people” – the subtext being that the approach so far has deserted northern cities like his own. Instead, he would ensure that power is devolved to local level. That includes a plan to “extend devolution” in Scotland by “taking power further down”. His argument was that Scots “feel just as distant from Holyrood… as they do from Westminster”.

That sentiment may be true, but Burnham’s speech offered little in the way of detail of how this would work. It merely made a vague reference to his mayorship of Manchester being a success and therefore it was the right option for all the UK.

But before plunging headfirst into making similar changes to Scotland, it is worth pausing to reflect on the different local government landscape. The idea that Scotland should have mayors because otherwise it is ‘falling behind’ the English model is not useful without considering what such a model would accomplish.

One obvious point to make is that the big Manchester success story touted by Burnham fans is the franchising of the bus network. But this is already being pursued in Glasgow without the need for a mayor. It also ignores the existence of Edinburgh’s Lothian Buses, a municipal ownership model regarded as highly successful.

Setting aside the fact that attempting to bypass Holyrood and hand powers straight to mayors is more than a little ironic and would set up an almighty row with the Scottish Government, there are fair questions to ask about what difference a mayor for Glasgow or Edinburgh would make without a wider review of what local government does.

As the frequent criticism goes, local government in Scotland is neither local nor government. The 32 local authorities cover considerably bigger areas and larger populations than those you find across the rest of Europe, yet they also lack the powers and resources to bring about transformational change. The centralisation of power in Scotland is simply a fact, with devolution not going much beyond parliament.

This was recognised by (nearly) all parties in the run-up to this year’s election. As highlighted by the Centre of Cities, there was cross-party consensus about the need to address centralisation – though what that looked like varied. Scottish Labour has backed the regional mayor model trumpeted by Burnham, while the SNP says it would empower “strategic regional economic partnerships”. The Greens, Lib Dems and Reform were a little vague beyond recognising the status quo wasn’t good enough. Only the Conservatives’ manifesto contained no reference to this topic.

John Swinney, instead of being dismissive of Burnham’s plans as showing a “lack of knowledge of Scotland”, should seek to engage with the more substantive question of how to improve local government. There is clearly goodwill across Holyrood’s political parties to at least have the discussion. If Scotland “stands ready” to take any new powers from Westminster and “devolve them sensibly”, as the first minister said when asked, then he should also stand ready to have a discussion about what that ‘sensible’ devolution – or decentralisation – looks like.

Simply adding mayors into the mix risks creating an extra layer of bureaucracy without delivering the desired outcome. The argument that a mayor would be directly accountable to the people they represent would only hold if the decisions they are making have any weight. So with what powers and with what resources would they perform their roles?

There’s also a question mark around how many mayors Scotland would need and where they would be. Given large parts of Scotland are rural, is there a risk rural communities would be left behind if such a city-centric model was prioritised?

That’s not to say mayors should be ruled out entirely, but they alone are no silver bullet.

There’s also a good argument for using the wider conversation around public service reform to bring about local government reform. As Carnegie UK’s Adam Lang noted several years back in a blog for think tank Enlighten, the “centralisation of power and cluttered landscape of delivery is a significant contributing factor to the well-documented implementation gap that exists between the aims of our policy making on paper and the reality of delivery on the ground”.

Audit Scotland has repeatedly warned that the way councils are delivering local services is unsustainable. Some local authorities are already considering ways to work together and share resources, which should be encouraged. But we can go a step further by looking at the range of services that should be delivered at local level and empowering those best placed to do it.

In an interview with Holyrood back in 2022, Burnham complained that UK cities “aren’t empowered enough” and compared them unfavourably to the “unbelievably well-developed powers” that US mayors have. But simply creating the mayor’s office and not looking at the wider landscape around what powers are held by what levels of government would be a false solution. Scottish local government needs more than a mirror of Manchester’s mayor.