Will Andy Burnham’s pledge of growth in every postcode deliver bricks and mortar?

It has been quite a while since the UK had a leader with a gift for clear and inspirational communication. Andy Burnham, the presumptive prime minister, has these skills in abundance.

As he sought to engage his electorate of 411 Labour MPs with a speech at the People’s History Museum in Manchester on Monday, he crystallised the nation’s challenge through a lens aligned to his personality and experience – investment beyond London, collaboration over conflict, hope in every heart, and good growth for all.

It is a message that was intended to resonate with a wider audience but is not what you expect to hear from the leader of a party at the start of year three of a parliamentary term. Year three should be the year when policy promises are landed.

The machinery of government has lost the habit of delivery

However, the machinery of government has lost the habit of delivery. Given the UK’s chronic political instability since 2016, we have had no end of big ideas and complex strategies, but much less in terms of outcomes that are recognised by an impatient electorate.

When Burnham declared that he needed 10 years to deliver his vision of devolution, reindustrialisation and regeneration, the penny dropped for me. Of course he needs time, but how many 10-year plans have been launched since the referendum? By my calculation, at least nine.

The paradox is that even as politicians develop ever more sophisticated and complex solutions to intractable problems, events and the public allow less time for policy to be developed and measures to take effect.

Who can forget “levelling up”, Boris Johnson’s marquee campaign promise that took two years to convert from soundbite into policy and was then shipwrecked within nine months? With politics more fragmented than ever, there is little chance of a common vision, but history often rhymes.

Burnham’s advisers Andy Haldane and Jim O’Neill – former Bank of England chief economist and former Treasury minister respectively – have been associated with previous iterations of devolution and are both core members of the Burnham team.

Burnham’s speech rightly focused on the big picture that his audience of MPs wanted to see. He did not need to dwell on health, welfare, net zero, water or rail, even though all remain live in the background. Each involves complex policy development and long-term implementation, and each highlights the sheer difficulty of governing – the levers that do not work, the unintended consequences, the events. Implementation can wait for another day.

So, as he takes on the role as leader, which he surely will, Burnham will need to develop a new superpower to match his evident abilities in fostering focus, hope and consensus. It is the power of ambidexterity: maintaining momentum on the legislative programme, sticking with vital 10-year plans for health, infrastructure, industrial renewal and defence, and finding the bandwidth to “rewire the state” while dealing with the day-to-day of politics and events.

The honeymoon will be short, and the Burnham team have little time to refine their plans

Even with an electorate as fragmented as the UK’s, the nation will want Burnham’s approach to succeed. His analysis is broadly correct: the UK is far too centralised, and politics, policy and process too often get in the way of progress, as slow infrastructure delivery repeatedly shows. For the built environment sector, a leader focused on growth, regeneration and housebuilding already has a head start.

But the honeymoon will be short, and the Burnham team have little time to refine their plans. We want continuity with decisions on the existing pipeline moving ahead without delay. We want change, with more investment in public housing rather than investment displaced from other sectors.

Above all, we need to see signs of progress. The third year of a five-year term gives no room for delay and, if Burnham is to succeed on his own terms, he needs to secure his mandate for a second term of Labour government in the next 18 months. The government is in turnaround.

Turnaround sounds traumatic but is not unusual in business. Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia each went through painful change to reach their current position, showing that meaningful transformation is possible in the full glare of customer, investor and competitor attention.

However, successful turnarounds did not occur against the odds, and their common features illustrate the limits to transformation. Helpfully for Burnham, clarity of mission and the nature of the change required are critical success factors. So, too, is the fit between new thinking, culture and identity – connecting the politics of fairness with the economics of catch-up.

But ideas also need to reflect the reality of the external environment, in particular the capability and capacity of the state to change and the time left to create momentum.

So, will growth occur in every postcode? Perhaps not, but delivery on in-flight programmes could create momentum.

Burnham’s challenge is to use existing capacity in the three years the government has left: ramping up water investment, delivering change in the NHS, rail and local government, progressing national programmes such as HS2, and stopping the government from fighting itself.

These are huge tasks but, if a Burnham-led government can achieve them, then perhaps it will actually be time to discuss another 10-year plan.

Simon Rawlinson is a partner at Arcadis