Miatta Fahnbulleh, the resigned minister who co-conspirators will know well, is Burnham’s main policy adviser right now. She is reportedly managing the “spreadsheet” of policies to be enacted by Andy Burnham on his entry to No10. Here is her on the Today Programme this morning trying to explain how his devolution will be better than previous attempts:
“But for me, if you are going to do this in the way that will generally impact our communities across the country, it has to be gripped by the centre.
It’s got to be radical devolution. So not devolution at the margins. And what I’d say is the approach that successive governments have taken has been a rather ad hoc devolution. A devolution, if you like, attrition, where places are having to make the case for powers that they know that they can use effectively to drive change in their place.
And I think what Andy is saying is this will be core to my project and I will shift the institutions to make it very hard for Whitehall to cleave onto power and our job is to facilitate places.
That is a very different mindset and a mindset that’s been set by the very top and I think that will be absolutely transformative in changing the way that government works. So that fundamentally places have the power to lift up their communities.”
Amol Rajan asked about Scotland and Wales, which got huge amounts of devolution, and have terrible growth. Fahnbulleh said they should devolve as well:
“I think firstly, one of the challenges for our colleagues in Scotland and Wales is how we devolve power out of the assembly out of if you like the central national government and into places, and I think that is part of the agenda Andy is setting out in England.
And I think we do need to see a similar thing in Scotland and Wales so that our city regions have the ability to work with our communities to drive change for their place.
But look, I think the second part of that is obviously giving power to places is key but there are a set of things that you need to do at the national level to also drive change in place and so this isn’t saying national government evacuates you know the space in terms of job creation in terms of creating the conditions for growth and creating the conditions to shift living standards.
It is about a partnership between the national the local and the private sector and I think he’s setting out a very different framework a very different model in which we can do that where there is genuine power in places to do the job and get on with it.”
In case anyone thought this philosophy was fleshed out. Team Burnham is briefing out details on where Andy will be living during the week instead of what they will actually do. No wonder they don’t want him to answer questions…
Badenoch said at her speech on Monday morning: “We are absolutely ready to fight a general election. We say the results in Aberdeen South: 50% of the vote. Because we can unite the country… It’s about uniting the country, for God’s sake, behind a centre-right agenda.”