C-suite executives from around the world could have been forgiven for reaching for the atlas when the former Mayor of Manchester (a smallish city 200 miles north of London) became the U.K.’s seventh prime minister in ten years. Andy Burnham is so keen to make the city he once ran the heart of his political project he announced that there would be a “Downing Street North” established in Manchester, a little like putting a “White House Atlanta” in Georgia’s state capital.
It would be easy to mock “Manchesterism” as little more than a marketing slogan. Running a city region is radically dissimilar from running a country, however good the publicly owned bus service is. Burnham knew he had to signal a change of gear after the troubled premiership of Sir Keir Starmer and being “from the north of England” seemed as good an option as any (the British are oddly obsessed by the relative superiority of the part of the country they are from). The only northern element of Starmer’s CV is that he lives in north London, a part of the U.K. joked about by those who don’t reside there as being obsessed with house prices, Tuscan extra-virgin olive oil, and sourdough bread.
The new PM is, though, onto something. Unbalanced growth (major global cities doing well, towns and rural areas struggling) is an economic reality, whether you come from New York or Gary, Indiana, London or Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Paris or Roubaix, Hauts-de-France. If “left behind” means anything, it means the unequal sharing of the economic benefits of growth.
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Whether you are President Donald Trump, President Emmanuel Macron or Prime Minister Andy Burnham, tackling such discontinuities is a worthwhile project. Investment in transport and digital infrastructure outside the flashier urban centers, support for education and workplace apprenticeships and tax breaks for business investment in key high-tech and service sectors are all helped by carefully targeted state activity.
But Burnham needs to be careful that he doesn’t sacrifice the baby while draining the bathwater. In a world of intense global competition, it is vital to make the most of your global crown jewels and be grateful that you have any at all. Macron enjoys nothing more than a glittering reception in France’s capital, a place foreign power brokers and business leaders like to spend time. Trump is a proud New Yorker, whatever he may think of that city’s mayor. Burnham needs to ensure that his “pro-Manchester” narrative doesn’t become confused with an anti-London one.
London is one of the world’s few global cities, and therefore essential to the prosperity of not just the U.K. (and Manchester), but Europe and the rest of the world economy. If it were a country, the city’s total economic output would put it just outside the top twenty global economies in the world. It accounts for 22% of total U.K. economic output and has an average GDP per person of £69,000, well above the U.K. average of £39,400. When it comes to labor productivity, London was 29% more productive than the UK average in 2023, based on the measure of output per hour worked.
London is also a leading location for foreign direct investment. Investors ranked London ahead of New York and Paris as the most attractive global city over the next three years, according to the EY UK Attractiveness Survey 2026. Alongside the powerhouse sectors of financial services, insurance, legal and technology in which London leads, it is a cultural and tourism honeypot. Nine of the top ten visitor attractions in the U.K. are in London, and Windsor Great Park (the one outlier) is a short train ride away. Fiscal transfers from London to the rest of the UK are substantial.
It would be an unalloyed good if places like Manchester were supported to improve their economic performance. But that will not be helped by taking your eye off the U.K.’s greatest asset as you search for some political advantage from a “north versus south” narrative similar to the “coastal versus heartland” story often told in the U.S. Economic growth is not a zero-sum game.
If [London] were a country, the city’s total economic output would put it just outside the top twenty global economies in the world.
“Greater Manchester remains 35% less productive than London, a demonstrably larger gap than between France’s second city, Lyon, and Paris, which stands at just 20%,” a report by the Resolution Foundation, a think tank, said. “If productivity in both the Manchester metro area and London continues to grow at its 2004-2019 pace, it would take nearly a century to close the productivity gap to that observed between Lyon and Paris.”
Burnham does not have that long to wait. If he really wants to make a difference to the economic fortunes of the U.K. and Europe (from which the U.K. hugely benefits), he would be well advised to focus on its greatest asset, a city of global significance in a world where scale players are any country’s superpower.
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