UofG Centre for Public Policy

4 August 2026: Researchers from the universities of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Strathclyde examine the opportunities and challenges of new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham's devolution agenda for regional development in Scotland, writing that successful decentralisation will depend on agreement on responsibilities, resources, institutional capacity and the limits of central intervention within a complex multi-level architecture.

Blog by Dr David Waite and Professor Graeme Roy (University of Glasgow), Professor Stuart McIntyre (University of Strathclyde) and Professor James Mitchell (University of Edinburgh) 

Amid a wave of Burnham-mania sweeping through parts of the media and the wider public, it is perhaps unsurprising that the new Prime Minister has begun his term by attempting to disprove former New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s famous dictum that politicians “campaign in poetry and govern in prose”. Instead, he appears determined – for as long as possible – to govern in poetry too.

Regardless, we may now be approaching peak “Manchesterism”: the belief that the experience of governing Greater Manchester can be scaled up to transform the economy and society of the United Kingdom. In the Guardian recently, the new Prime Minister wrote: “We built a city-region with twice the economic growth of anywhere else in the UK. What we did in Greater Manchester, we can do across our nation." Devolution and a re-wiring of the state is clearly a key focus and personal mission for Burnham, what is not yet evident is how he sees local autonomy, national standards, fiscal equalisation and the existing devolved settlement fitting together to deliver this mission. What one might see as setting a national standard that must be achieved everywhere, others could view as interference in local decision-making.

The promise is that the methods, institutions and political instincts developed during Burnham’s time as mayor can now be applied to the country as a whole, fixing national problems through a distinctly Mancunian model of government. The creation of Number 10 North (in the English north at least) was intended as a symbolic shifting of political power in the UK. The new platform of No.10 North has already been used to host a revived ‘National Economic Council’, a first step in trying to show that the creation of Number 10 North is more than a gimmick. There have also been moves to relocate the devolution function out of MHCLG to the Office for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. These changes signal greater priority being attached to devolution but they do not yet amount to a governing framework.

Yet there is an inherent and unspoken tension in the pitch that the Prime Minister is making that will require time to work through. The approach set out by the PM means that different choices can be made in different places, as they currently are across already devolved policy areas. Some places will make choices that improve outcomes, other areas – however well meaning – will make choices that will not, and indeed may fail spectacularly. This is what truly decentralised systems permit. What then?

Are we to believe that the UK Government (UKG) will take no further interest in improving outcomes in newly devolved regions where bad policy choices are made? While the appeal of devolution in itself and for its own sake can prove intoxicating for some, a sustainable system of devolution necessitates a frank and urgent discussion of how the multi-level governance system in the UK coheres. What risks will the centre allow localities to take? What baselines and guard rails on local deviation will be set out? This will be a complex and (likely) ongoing job.

If devolution is an intoxicating idea for many politicians, fiscal devolution often appears irresistible and the recent Cabinet statement makes moves here for England. However, the Scottish experience points to mixed effects, based on complex risks and incentives, while setting out an appropriate institutional architecture takes some time too. Additionally, critical issues such as equalisation can be both technically complex and politically sensitive. Such concerns warrant a fuller commentary, of course.

Questions about local capability to take on and successfully operationalise additional powers are also significant. As prior English devolution frameworks have set out - since the Levelling Up white paper - different local governance capacities are in evidence in different places. Greater Manchester has arguably had a somewhat privileged and long-run story in building capacities, meanwhile the abilities of Greater Lincolnshire (with the “combined county authority” established in 2025) may be somewhat more embryonic. Time is therefore a key dimension, and in the Scottish context, capabilities have developed over 25 years and continue to evolve. If the intention is to have more symmetric devolution, significant investment will need to be put in place to enhance and equalise this capacity. Otherwise asymmetric decentralisation will need to persist – capacities given according to local readiness.

The claimed objective of the new Burnham administration to re-wire the state based on a devolution ethos also poses questions for the existing Devolved Administrations and, indeed, Greater London. Some of us have written previously that the UK Government’s approach in engaging with the Devolved Administrations to date has been characterised as “devolve and forget”, where devolved powers are passed down with little other policy or strategy co-ordination. This is a problematic approach, not least as devolving policy responsibility in a given area does not mean that reserved policy ceases to affect outcomes in that area nor that the UK Government does not have an interest in those outcomes. There remain a number of local and regional economic development tools - such as city-region deals - where the UKG has taken active investment and steering roles.

Are we to have a more structured settlement that addresses these issues head on, or is it to be the ultimate expression of political muddle through: structural agnosticism punctuated by moments of political convenience where the UK Government actively shapes local policymaking (deals, investment zones etc). In short: leave them to it generally, but not when it doesn’t suit (or when politics requires otherwise). Some want the UK Government to keep out of policy areas already devolved, particularly given local government is devolved in Scotland (this position might be termed ‘devolve and respect’).

The involvement of the centre is common in other, even federal systems, however, and indeed might be thought necessary given that the centre retains a policy influence over outcomes in devolved areas. The UK as a system of government has attributes closer to that captured by Grodzins’ metaphor[1], drawn for his study of federalism, of a marble cake with overlapping and inter-dependent competencies, rather than a layered cake in which competencies are strictly separated.

Where does this leave us?

We would argue that we need to resist the idea that decentralisation in and of itself is some elixir for weaker economic and social outcomes in different parts of the UK. Similarly, the notion that fiscal devolution will deliver a dose of accountability for local decision making, without also introducing significant budgetary risks, needs to be subject to robust scrutiny. The evidence on the impacts of decentralisation across the OECD is ambiguous. What the evidence does show, however, is that institutional quality matters. Therefore, how decentralisation is conceived and implemented across a messy multi-level governance architecture is going to be key.

While the new Prime Minister has a clarity to his high-level messaging around enhanced devolution and decentralisation away from Whitehall, he’ll take this forward in a landscape that is already complex. There are a range of existing actors that he will have to engage with and many competing local and political interests. In addition, a range of thorny technical issues will need to be resolved, from frameworks for governance and accountability through to funding models and delivering regional funding equalisation.

In Scotland, these debates should prompt us to open-up a discussion with Scottish localities - and strengthened “regional economic partnerships” - on what next steps for regional policy could usefully look like. Scottish voices need to be active in the wider UK devolution conversations – to shape it, share our experiences, and to learn from others. These conversations can then inform what might be done with powers already devolved to the Scottish Parliament to enhance devolution within Scotland.

For example, there may be scope to consider local empowerment through deconcentrating-type steps where national bodies governed at the DA level, such as Scottish Enterprise, work closely with local bodies (and have a duty to do so). This implies city-region cabinets and regional economic partnerships working with the Scottish Government and UK Government, not just clamouring for powers as a policy movement of the moment. Local growth plans are obvious vehicles to work this through.

Taking this forward is firmly in the hands of the Scottish Government (SG), and there are reasons for hope. For a start it now finds itself engaging with a pro-devolution PM (devo within Scotland), and may find the UK Government a more amenable partner in taking this agenda forward. At the same time the Scottish Government has already made its own gestures towards regional empowerment through “public service reform” prior to Burnham’s ascent. This might create an opportunity to push this shared agenda further and faster than has hitherto been possible in the post-devolution era. A SG-UKG agreed decentralisation framework - setting out an approach to asymmetric decentralisation that gives clear sight lines to local leaders - could provide a useful impetus, and point of co-ordination, for urban and regional policy given Scotland’s tripartite governance dimensions.

The opportunity is real. A UK Government committed to devolution and a Scottish Government already exploring regional empowerment may be able to construct a clearer and more ambitious settlement than either could achieve alone. But that will require more than declarations of faith in local power and generic commitments to work together. It will require agreement on responsibilities, resources, institutional capacity and the limits of central intervention within a complex multi-level architecture. The poetry of devolution is easy to recite. The harder task is writing the prose by which it can actually be governed.

Authors

Dr David Waite is a Senior Lecturer in the University of Glasgow's School of Social and Political Sciences. David's research focuses on the development of second-tier city-regions, with interest in the underpinning production systems at and the governance responses for these places. He is a Senior Fellow of the University of Glasgow Centre for Public Policy.

Graeme Roy is Professor of Economics, Deputy Head of the College of Social Sciences and Assistant Vice Principal at the University of Glasgow. Graeme is Chair of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, Scotland’s official independent economic and fiscal forecaster. He is a Senior Fellow of the University of Glasgow Centre for Public Policy.

James Mitchell is Professor of Public Policy at the University of Edinburgh. He is a leading writer, thinker and commentator on Scottish political and constitutional affairs.

Stuart McIntyre is a Professor of Economics at the University of Strathclyde. He is a Fellow of the Office for National Statistics and a Research Associate at the ONS-funded Economic Statistics Centre of Excellence.

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^{[1] Morton Grodzins (1966), The American System: A New View of Government in the United States, Chicago, Il., Rand McNally.}

Photo by Bruno BD on Unsplash

First published: 4 August 2026