Andy Walker reviews Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain, by Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, published by Trapeze today.

Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram, the mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region, set out their stall for a better way of running Britian in this very readable book, published today. Part memoir, part manifesto, Head North makes a passionate case for restructuring politics with the regions and regional devolution at the heart of a transformed political system that works for the many and not the few, to coin a phrase.

The book begins with the moment, in a pub on Horseferry Road after a House of Commons vote, when Burnham and Rotheram, then MPs, finally shook hands on something they had been mulling over for months – to leave Westminster together, head north and “build something different from the outside”. As they both describe it: “When we were growing up, if someone had told us we would one day become members of parliament, we would have struggled to believe it. If they had followed it up by saying we would one day throw it all away and walk out of parliament, it would have blown our minds. This book is the story of why we did it.”

The book describes their earlier background as working class lads from Liverpool and the experiences that shaped their lives and their politics. The Hillsborough tragedy looms large for both of them. Liverpool-supporting Rotheram attended the match and experienced the horror first-hand. Evertonian Burnham felt the disaster’s impact just as acutely, as a Scouser from the blue half of the city who saw his community come together and unite to fight back against an establishment determined to frustrate people’s demands for justice.

Burnham and Rotheram highlight Hillsborough – and other scandals like Grenfell and the Post Office – to show a political class and a wider establishment that has systematically blocked and hampered the hopes and aspirations of working-class people, especially, though not exclusively, those from the north. Head North makes a strong argument that the ‘Westminster knows best’ decision-making approach is not working – and indeed has never worked – and what’s needed is a new way of doing politics and the implementation of real devolution that would transform the country and the prospects of the people who live in it.

Their experiences in parliament may have been different – Burnham became a minister in the Blair government, while Rotheram was a parliamentary private secretary for none other than Jeremy Corbyn – but those experiences led both to become frustrated, disillusioned and angry about the Westminster system and determined to do something different to make real change happen. At times Head North reads like a call to arms against the status quo and I’m sure that neither of the authors would disagree with that assessment. The book’s very title is an invitation to the reader to look at the north and to a different way of doing things that devolves power away from the centre and back to the regions. Burnham and Rotheram have also put together a ten-point Head North Manifesto (see box below) that, as well as calling for the scrapping of the House of Lords, also includes a written constitution, voting reform, a senate for the regions and, interestingly, the removal of the whipping system in parliament.

From the renationalisation of public transport networks to rebuilding and strengthening the NHS and social care spaces, from rewiring Westminster to creating a new education system that provides opportunity for all, Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram’s vision for Britain doesn’t seem an unrealistic alternative to what’s currently on offer – in fact it looks like a very tangible and workable possibility. Whether Labour’s current leadership would agree with that, however, is another matter altogether.

The book ends with a passionate call for change from the two mayors: “This much we know for sure: people and places across the UK will never be equal until we change the way it is run. Head North is about a mindset. It is an invitation to our readers to do what we did – to take their heads out of the restricted confines of the current political system and to start imagining a new one, with northern values at its heart, that would work better for everywhere.”

The two regional mayors want all those, in any part of the UK, who feel frustrated about the position the country is in, to do what they did and to move away from the orthodoxy that Westminster is the only show in town and start thinking about what a different political system could look like. As Burnham and Rotheram say: “Westminster remains an antiquated world into which degrees of democracy were introduced as the franchise was extended. But fundamentally, it remains the same – a system built to concentrate power in the hands of the already-powerful and that much has not changed through the centuries. This over-concentration of political power in one place in too few hands is the main reason why Britain is one of the most politically centralised and economically unbalanced countries in the developed world.” You can’t argue with that!

This is not a book that its authors want people to just read and then leave on a shelf though. Their hope is that Head North will help “build a movement of people over the next 25 years which will eventually change Westminster from the outside”. It will be interesting to see how both Rotheram and Burnham view the likelihood of a new Labour government committed to caution and a safety-first approach. Will they both stand by and let Keir Starmer and the current leadership’s unambitious approach to politics win the day? Or will they follow their own Head North mindset and fight for change? I’d like to think that they will ‘have a go’ and fight back. Things might be about to get interesting.

The Head North Manifesto

1. A Written Constitution

2. A Basic Law

3. Reform of the Voting System

4. Removal of the Whip

5. A Senate of the Nations and Regions

6. Full Devolution

7. Two Equal Paths in Education

8. A Grenfell Law

9. A Hillsborough Law

10. Net Zero to Reindustralise the North

Andy Walker is a journalist and communications consultant.