The King of the North Has Moved Into His New Palace

He wanted it in a big way — which is exactly the problem.

There is a rule I try to live by, and it is this: anyone who wants a job at level of desire should be the last person given it. It applies anywhere. It applies to people who campaign for the chairmanship of the parish council. And it applies, with interest, to men who spend a decade as Mayor of Greater Manchester. But are auditioning to run the entire country.

Andy Burnham did not stumble into No.10. He circled it for years, in the manner of a man circling a buffet table trying to look like he isn't hungry. Now he's got the job. And five days in, he's already opened a second one, in Manchester, in case the first wasn't quite enough.

"No.10 North" is being sold to us as devolution. Civil servants relocating and officials encouraged north with relocation packages. All costing the taxpayer nothing extra. We're assured of that. But in the traditional manner of announcements of that kind. Ones that end up costing the taxpayer something extra. We're also told it is "not a gimmick". Which is the sort of thing you only feel the need to say about something that is one.

I have no interest in telling you this is a good idea because it's a Labour idea, or a bad one because it's a Labour idea. I don't do that. and I'm not going to start for a man who spent Covid turning a funding row into a passion play. A Play where he was the wronged northern martyr. That performance would have worked as well from the right. And others have tried it. Tried in various fancy dress. And by people of every rosette colour going back generations.

The thing to notice isn't the party. It's the appetite.

Every single person who ends up living at that address wanted it far more than is healthy. That's not a partisan observation, it's the job description. You do not arrive at the top of British politics by accident. Or a reluctant hero, or because your friends talked you into it after the third pint. You arrive there by wanting it more than the people around you. For years. Sometimes decades, while telling journalists you're: "focused on the job in hand."

Starmer wanted it. Sunak wanted it. Truss, wanted it. Burnham has wanted it since roughly the Blair government. They blocked him from Parliament for his trouble this year. And he got there anyway. A man committed to the destination. To the point where when they told him he couldn't come home by the front door, it didn't slow him down.

So when the new office in Manchester gets described to us as a "circuit-breaker". A fresh start, a new model. This is the sentence every incoming Prime Minister reads out on the same stretch of pavement. Regardless of which way they lean. Because it is a sentence written for the pavement rather than for the country.

The symbolism is doing the work that policy would otherwise have to do. And symbolism is always cheaper and quicker to deliver in week one than anything real. That isn't a criticism of Burnham on his own. It's a criticism of the entire selection process that produces people like him. A process that filters, at every stage, for exactly the kind of hunger that should disqualify you. And rewards it with the one office where hunger is least reassuring to see up close.

None of which means the office itself is worthless. Plenty of good policy has arrived wrapped in a desperate press release. And if it means that actual power evolves. Power over housing, transport and skills moves north on the back of this? The country should take it and not ask too many questions about the motive. But watch what happens in a year, not what's said this week.

Watch whether decisions move, or move desks. I'd say the office will survive. But only as long as the enthusiasm of the man who wanted it so bad. Bad enough to build himself a second No. 10 within the week. I'd say the same whoever was standing on that pavement. And in whatever colour of tie.

Some circuit-breaker.