Andy Burn­ham is the sev­enth British prime min­is­ter since Brex­it ten years ago. The length­en­ing line of im­me­di­ate pre­de­ces­sors with ab­bre­vi­at­ed tenures are David Cameron, who re­signed af­ter he lost the Brex­it ref­er­en­dum, There­sa May, Boris John­son, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer, the lat­est ad­di­tion. A “re­volv­ing door at 10 Down­ing Street.”

Andy Burn­ham comes with a pos­i­tive rep­u­ta­tion af­ter a suc­cess­ful nine-year tenure as may­or of Greater Man­ches­ter, run­ning a ma­jor city-re­gion whose econ­o­my grew at twice the na­tion­al rate. In­ter­est­ing­ly, he at­tained the top spot by an “un­usu­al route”, not hav­ing faced the British elec­torate in a gen­er­al elec­tion as leader of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty. Un­der Britain’s par­lia­men­tary sys­tem, with the pre­ma­ture de­par­ture of a sit­ting prime min­is­ter, in this case Starmer, it is the par­ty in pow­er, in this case Labour, that gets to de­cide who is at the helm.

Burn­ham seized the op­por­tu­ni­ty when Starmer faced a lead­er­ship cri­sis af­ter Labour lost the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

He moved from be­ing may­or of Greater Man­ches­ter and en­tered par­lia­ment via a by-elec­tion for the Mak­er­field con­stituen­cy in North­west Eng­land af­ter the Labour MP Josh Si­mons re­signed to al­low him to stand for Par­lia­ment. Burn­ham won the elec­tion with 54.8 per cent of the vote, beat­ing his op­po­nent, the Re­form UK’s can­di­date, by 9000, a feat that, in ad­di­tion to his suc­cess­ful tenure as may­or, was a ma­jor de­ter­mi­nant in his be­ing cho­sen as Labour leader and then prime min­is­ter.

Many MPs feel Burn­ham, with his com­mon touch, will halt the pop­ulist rise of Nigel Farage’s Re­form UK par­ty. When Starmer fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed to go, Burn­ham made an un­con­test­ed bid for lead­er­ship of the gov­ern­ing Labour Par­ty with the back­ing of al­most 95 per cent of his par­ty’s law­mak­ers in Par­lia­ment.

Once he be­came Labour leader, his path to the pre­mier­ship was se­cured. Burn­ham’s route has “lit­tle prece­dent’ in British pol­i­tics opined the Fi­nan­cial Times. Will it work for him?

The new PM is fac­ing an al­most dire sit­u­a­tion in Britain to­day, all stem­ming from the colos­sal blun­der of ex­it­ing the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) which I termed an “ut­ter­ly back­ward” move in 2016. For the past ten years, the coun­try has been suf­fer­ing the con­se­quences in every area of na­tion­al life. Par­tic­u­lar­ly the econ­o­my, now “small­er”, “poor­er.” “slug­gish” or “stalled”. This has pro­found­ly af­fect­ed British pol­i­tics. All ad­min­is­tra­tions since the ref­er­en­dum fell pre­ma­ture­ly from Brex­it-pro­duced chal­lenges.

Will Burn­ham stop the slide? He wants to ap­ply his “Man­ches­ter­ism” as a na­tion­al strat­e­gy “de­volv­ing pow­ers to cities and re­gions to re­vive lo­cal economies by forg­ing part­ner­ships be­tween the pub­lic and pri­vate sec­tors.” Burn­ham says this would bring about “the biggest change in our life­times to the way the coun­try is run.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go should take note. For decades we have talked de­vo­lu­tion of pow­er to re­gion­al bod­ies and city cor­po­ra­tions. This is key to en­sur­ing the de­vel­op­ment process ef­fec­tive­ly reach­es every area of the na­tion in­stead of be­ing city-cen­tric as has pre­vailed for the past 60 years, hob­bling na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. With­out de­vo­lu­tion, much of the na­tion’s hu­man and nat­ur­al re­sources are left lan­guish­ing when these could be brought in­to play for sus­tain­able growth.

We have not even be­gun that crit­i­cal jour­ney. The last ad­min­is­tra­tion held con­sul­ta­tions but no ac­tion. But the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion has ac­tion planned.

And here we have in Britain, an op­por­tu­ni­ty to ob­serve how and if de­vo­lu­tion works in the na­tion as a whole as it has ob­vi­ous­ly worked for Greater Man­ches­ter. It should be most in­ter­est­ing to watch.

Es­pe­cial­ly with an ap­par­ent con­tra­dic­tion in Burn­ham’s ap­proach. Whilst a great many wel­come his plan for de­vo­lu­tion, an equal num­ber see an­ti­quat­ed cen­tral­i­sa­tion in his as­pi­ra­tion to bring bus­es, hous­ing, en­er­gy, wa­ter, rail and oth­er pub­lic util­i­ties un­der pub­lic con­trol as he ap­par­ent­ly did with suc­cess in Man­ches­ter.

This would be an amaz­ing re­ver­sal and re­pu­di­a­tion of four decades of ne­olib­er­al­ism in the Unit­ed King­dom start­ed by the late great Mar­garet Thatch­er who rev­o­lu­tionised pub­lic pol­i­cy in favour­ing pri­vati­sa­tion of pub­lic util­i­ties over cen­tralised state con­trol.

In­deed, Burn­ham has told the par­ty faith­ful that the ve­hi­cle for “the most sig­nif­i­cant change mo­ment” in 40 years, is a “re­turn of the Labour they once knew”.

But which Labour, peo­ple ask? Seems more like pre-1990s with “Clement At­tlee’s wel­fare state or James Callaghan’s union links”. Cer­tain­ly not the New Labour of Tony Blair and Gor­don Brown as Prime Min­is­ter and Chan­cel­lor re­spec­tive­ly in the ’90s and who, like Thatch­er, didn’t mind “un­leash­ing the an­i­mal spir­its of busi­ness”. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, the Fi­nan­cial Times warns Burn­ham: “Nos­tal­gia for a se­mi-imag­i­nary past is not a ba­sis for sound pol­i­cy­mak­ing.”

Trinidad and To­ba­go ought to have a keen in­ter­est here. We have known noth­ing but cen­tralised ad­min­is­tra­tion and state con­trol of pub­lic util­i­ties.

In­deed, we have a mas­sive state en­ter­prise sec­tor that has been gen­er­al­ly dis­as­trous in de­liv­ery, epit­o­mised by WASA and PTSC, plagued since in­de­pen­dence by “waste, mis­man­age­ment, in­ef­fi­cien­cies” and worse and which this cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­mit­ted to fix­ing. The out­come of the Andy Burn­ham gov­ern­ment in Britain ought to pro­vide some in­ter­est­ing per­spec­tives re­gard­ing pol­i­cy pre­scrip­tions and di­rec­tions for this coun­try.

Stay tuned, Trinidad and To­ba­go. Ob­serve close­ly.