Andy Burnham, the likely next Prime Minister, has pledged to create a new No 10 unit based in Manchester. The move forms part of a wider plan to devolve power away from Westminster and promote reindustrialisation and utility reform.
The proposal to plant a new No 10 unit in Manchester was rejected by two to one, a comfortable rather than crushing defeat but decisive all the same: 14 of the 21 voters with profiles said no, and yes never assembled a majority anywhere except among the tiny handful of over-65s.
The generational pattern is the most telling thing here. Younger and older voters flirted with the idea in small numbers — one in three of the 16-24s, half the 65+ pair — but the 35-44 and 45-54 cohorts, eight votes between them, rejected it unanimously. It is the middle of working life, not the young radicals or the retirees, who were least persuaded that Whitehall power should follow Burnham north.
Gender told a similar story from a different angle: men split 40% yes, women just 17%, a gap that echoes a familiar pattern on constitutional and devolution questions, where women's votes on this platform have tended to run more cautious than men's on schemes to redraw where power sits. Layered on the age split, it suggests this was less a Manchester-versus-London question than one about who trusts institutional experiments generally.
For a policy pitched as the centrepiece of a reindustrialisation and devolution agenda, the chamber's answer was a fairly flat no — not outrage, just scepticism that moving the furniture moves the power.
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2 Opinions
Such nonsense
This is nonsensical whataboutery