UofG Centre for Public Policy

17 September 2026: In an article published in The Herald on Monday 14 September, Professor Graeme Roy writes about Andy Burnham’s devolution agenda and Glasgow, and the lessons Glasgow might take from Greater Manchester, including how it has developed the ability to identify regional priorities and shape the policies needed at a regional and national level to address them.

This article was originally published in The Herald on Monday 14 September 2026.

Andy Burnham intends to make devolution one of the defining features of his premiership.

His plans for England promise greater autonomy for city-regions. This includes more flexibility over funding and a stronger voice for local leaders in national policy. 

For Scotland, the implications are less straightforward. Devolution here operates within a complex relationship between local government, Holyrood and Westminster. 

But that complexity should not become an excuse for cities like Glasgow to sit back and wait.

In advance of next year’s local elections, there is the opportunity to engage positively with the new PM and growth unit in No.10 North. The question is what Glasgow should ask for?

The temptation will be to follow a familiar route: identify a list of projects, attach estimates of jobs and economic benefits, and lobby for additional UK Government money.

We have been here before.

The 2014 Glasgow City Deal secured around £1 billion of investment, with the promise of 28,000 new jobs. Such funding supported some important projects and helped to leverage in additional finance. 

But the deal was highly restrictive beyond a time-limited injection of cash. It was largely focused on capital projects, with less attention to areas such as innovation or broader economic development, and little flexibility to adapt as circumstances changed.

And circumstances did change. Brexit and Covid, for example, were not assumptions in economic plans developed a decade ago, nor was an extended period of stagnant growth. 

There is also a wider political economy challenge in simply asking, or being seen to ask, for more money. Scotland already has higher public expenditure than the UK average, including on economic development. Whatever the merits of individual projects, a Treasury facing fiscal pressures will ask: why should additional funding be the starting point? 

A closer look at the experience of Manchester offers a more interesting lesson.

Its current model was not created overnight, or by the election of a charismatic mayor. Collaboration, and the formation of a Greater Manchester identity evolved over decades. Early reforms were driven by local policymakers and new policy ideas within the region itself, long before any talk of a ‘Northern Powerhouse’ or a renewed devolution agenda. 

Since then, Greater Manchester has accumulated successive City, Growth and Devolution Deals, culminating in its Trailblazer settlement. Each agreement has added responsibilities and flexibilities. 

The lesson is not therefore that Glasgow needs a mayor, or that Manchester provides a template which can simply be imported north of the border. It is that devolution should be viewed as a process, rather than a single funding event, that builds capability and nurtures innovative policymaking within the region itself. 

Instead of beginning with a list of projects or powers, policymakers in Glasgow need to begin with the realistic outcomes they want to achieve. What are the principal barriers to higher productivity, better employment outcomes, an innovation system that is locally responsive (not an aspirational ‘Silicon somewhere’) and stronger investment? 

Such a bottom-up approach also makes it easier to align regional priorities with national economic policy. Manchester has been able to build on areas of genuine regional advantage and increasingly connect these to national industrial strategies. The relationship should work both ways: national policy supporting regional strengths, but regional policymaking also helping to shape national priorities.

Only then should the discussion move to policy.

Which interventions are most likely to make a difference? At what geographical scale should they operate? Which responsibilities are best exercised locally, which require Scottish Government involvement and where would UK policy need to change? 

That might lead to arguments for additional powers or funding. But it may equally point toward greater influence over national programmes, more flexible multi-year budgets, and improved coordination between governments.

Building capability is just as important as securing new powers. That means drawing on regional expertise, including our universities, building lasting partnerships and developing the capability and authority to make decisions and learn from them. None of this is particularly flashy, but it is how better policymaking is built.

Burnham’s agenda therefore offers Glasgow an opportunity to build a different relationship with Scotland’s two governments, based on clearer responsibilities and complementary policymaking.

That would be a more significant legacy than asking for another cheque from the Treasury based on the fear of missing out.

This article was originally published in The Herald on Monday 14 September 2026.

Author

Professor Graeme Roy is Vice Principal and Head of the College of Social Sciences at the University of Glasgow. He is Professor of Economics and Chair of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, Scotland’s official independent economic and fiscal forecaster.

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First published: 17 September 2026