Britain’s newly appointed – but not elected – Prime Minister Andy Burnham announced he will be working remotely Friday and not from the national capital London beginning what he sees as a long term move north.
The leftist Labour leader has fled the nation’s administrative heart in Whitehall for Manchester, establishing a regional base at Heron House in the city centre with its own protected bubble, in defiance of those who see his task as governing for all and not just his own electorate where he once presided as mayor.
Burnham claims his aim is to shift power from Westminster to the rest of the country even as the civil service for the most part remains in Central London along with ministerial offices and staff and can expect directions by phone or electronic communications.
On Friday in Manchester, the BBC reports Burnham will chair a meeting of the National Economic Council, a cabinet committee first launched in 2008 to respond to economic challenges around the UK.
Ahead of that meeting, the prime minister said: “For 40 years, power and resources have been sucked into the centre, and too many communities have felt forgotten, without the attention and investment they deserve.”
The new prime minister, a former Greater Manchester mayor where his family still lives, added: “The days of Whitehall resisting devolution are over, for good.”
Burnham took office without a general election, on the votes of Labour members and MPs, not the country, and sees nothing wrong with his move.
Reform leader Nigel Farage sees Burnham’s efforts to somehow reinvent his role as nothing more than performative theatrics that ignore his core job.
He doubts working remotely means ministers would face the same scrutiny that he and other senior Reform UK figures had received from the press.
“Given the abuse that I’ve had in the press lately, and some of my friends and colleagues have had in the press lately, I wonder whether the effective Deputy Prime Minister, Louise Haigh, will be addressed in every single BBC broadcast and newspaper article as ‘convicted fraudster Louise Haigh’”, he said.
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