The blueprint for Burnham’s plan to ‘rewire Britain’ could be found 700 miles away

Andy Burnham thinks Britain’s political culture is broken.

While his first few weeks in Downing Street have focused on grassroots policy, the new prime minister has made no secret of his plan to make his premiership a “circuit breaker” for Britain, starting with the “biggest rebalancing of power our country has ever seen”.

The former Greater Manchester mayor wants to bring about the “end of neoliberalism” and move beyond “trickle-down economics”, rooting decision-making and power in communities, rather than centrally in London.

He said that his administration would follow a “Makerfield test”, making decisions based on whether they would improve the lives of people in constituencies like his – a brand of politics driven by lifting up those he believes have been forgotten for decades.

No 10 North, announced to much fanfare last month, is just the start of Mr Burnham’s devolution revolution. He wants far more power transferred from Westminster to local leaders and has already unveiled plans to give all mayors of England’s city regions a share of income tax revenue for the first time.

This, combined with a plan to retake public control of essential services, is the key plank in the business-friendly socialist policy agenda Mr Burnham has dubbed “Manchesterism”. But to find an example of how Manchesterism could succeed, you may have to look a little further afield.

Found around 700 miles from the prime minister’s former patch, on the Nervión river that runs through Northern Spain’s Basque Country to the Bay of Biscay, Bilbao was historically a thriving port city that became a hive of heavy industry in the 20th century.

But like many port cities around the United Kingdom, it suffered the harsh impacts of deindustrialisation in the years after the Second World War, hitting a nadir in the 1980s as shipyard and factory closures caused large-scale unemployment.

“During the Eighties, because we were in a quite similar situation as Liverpool and other places in England,” Ivan Jiménez, president of the Port of Bilbao, tells The Independent.

“People used to say, ‘No opportunities, this is dead, the steel industry has died.’

“Here, in the Eighties, I remember that we here had a 25 per cent unemployment rate. It was devastated.”

But the Bilbao of 2026 has come a long way since the 1980s, and its recovery will be of particular interest to the UK’s new prime minister.

Once home to the city’s maritime might, the banks of the river are now most notable for the Guggenheim museum, built in 1997 to become the ship-shaped symbol of its revival.

Between its opening and 2015, GDP in the city more than doubled as it pivoted from a declining steel and shipbuilding economy to become a hub of clean energy, advanced manufacturing and biotechnology, with tourism and culture becoming key economies.

From 2000 to 2018, the city had the highest level of economic growth in Spain and, according to Mr Jiménez, that owes a lot to its devolved powers, similar to those Mr Burnham wishes to introduce in the UK.

Bilbao’s province, Biscay, is one of three which make up the autonomous community of the Basque Country, a region marked by a prominent separatist movement, part of which desires complete independence from Spain.

But the Basque Country’s self-governance means it has sweeping powers over tax, education, health, economic strategy and welfare.

As such, residents do not pay state income tax.

Instead of being funded by the Spanish central government in Madrid, Bilbao collects 100 per cent of its own income tax through its three provinces and keeps the majority, sending a fixed annual quota to the capital to pay for national services, such as the military.

Mr Burnham hopes that a similarly less centralised approach would revive the fortunes of Britain’s post-industrial regions. Ensuring that money and power are not concentrated in London is central to his agenda.

And, like in Bilbao, taxation could be key to that.

Last month, the prime minister announced that mayors in England will get to keep a share of taxes collected in their regions to “bring power home” to communities.

The regional leaders will receive a share of income tax revenues for the first time under the plans, which the government has described as the “biggest transfer of power from Westminster in a generation”, and would bolster their funding – on top of settlements currently allocated by central government.

Such autonomy has helped Bilbao thrive; according to Mr Jiménez, it proves that “you can manage without the dependency from the central state”.

“At the end, about 90 per cent of the taxes that are collected in the Basque Country stay in the Basque Country.

“With this autonomy, and in collaboration also with different other institutions – also from the state, also from Europe – they transformed a city that was based on heavy industry to advanced services and new industries.”

Mr Jiménez believes that consistent public investment through locally collected income taxes has allowed the region to develop in a way that suits itself, rather than having a path chosen for it by central government.

But this has been boosted, he says, by tailored private investment and collaboration with the public sector, such as the public-private partnership Bilbao Ría 2000, tasked with regenerating post-industrial sites.

“Collaboration is quite easy here,” Mr Jiménez says. To have a meeting here with any kind of politician for an entrepreneur, it’s quite easy.

“They used to tell us, for example, you go to Madrid or other places to have a meeting with the regional ministry, it’s quite difficult.

“In our case, the doors are always open because we are looking all the time for investment, research, development.”

It is, in many ways, redolent of what the MP for Makerfield wishes to achieve with his flagship policy of Number 10 North. Rather than everything being delivered through a nation’s capital, he hopes his new Manchester outpost will mean meetings for investment do not have to take place centrally.

Where Mr Burnham may struggle, however, is installing such a devolved economic system from scratch, Mr Jiménez says.

It is not a case of one size fits all, he believes, and such plans have to be bespoke in each region.

Though the English mayors have powers over matters such as transport and in their combined authorities, giving them control of taxes represents a radical change to the system.

And for Mr Jiménez, the reason it works in the Basque Country is its historic autonomy.

“If you ask me, nowadays, could it be possible to create this from zero in the Spanish state? I would find it very, very difficult,” he explains.

“If you want to translate this to any other place, and if you don't have a culture – a culture in our case coming from history – it could be a very difficult talk or discussion.

“That’s very clear, and would probably be much easier to implement this in a place where this identity plays a main role.”

Strong identity and pride – whether it is national in the case of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland or regional in places like the Liverpool City Region (where a ‘Scouse not English’ attitude exists) – and ensuring people believe that their part of the UK can thrive is key to making it work.

Mr Jiménez added: “You say: ‘I may feel English or not English, but I’m very linked to my region, and even if I feel English 100 per cent, I want to promote, I want to stay here, I want my children and grandchildren to grow up here with a lot of opportunities.’”

Retaining talent in the Basque Country is the job of Amaia Jugo, managing director of Bizkaia Talent.

When opening No 10 North, the prime minister recalled his own experience of moving to London as a graduate in the early 1990s to find work, as he promised to make that a thing of the past.

To allow people to build their lives in their home towns and cities, he has also pledged a project of reindustrialisation, not dissimilar to that in the Basque Country, bringing a green energy revolution to areas which lost their core industries in the 20th century.

About how the Basque Country has done so and prevents a brain drain, Ms Jugo said: “We explain that we have very good opportunities in strategic industries. We have different clusters, like automation, where you can have very good opportunities.

“When young people finish university, they are usually looking at London or Madrid. It is very important to be connected with them to show that they will have good opportunities here and can do a very good job in companies that have a good impact in our ecosystem.

“We have to change. We know that some industries are going to disappear or become smaller. So we have to understand that we need different industries.”