AIBU to think his speech sounded too parochial for a leader?

Your points about including the whole country are spot on.

Your points about AB being all about popularity are a personal, subjective view, with which many people disagree (including me). But an opinion you are of course entitled to form in a democratic country!

And that’s the whole issue - your post references the north and the south - I hope that as PM, Burnham remembers that the country consists of more than the north and the south. It’s clear that the north will be heard and that’s great. And people in the south have always been heard.

We have councils outside of these two areas that are bankrupt and probably corrupt. Devolution would only work if all areas of the country are given sufficient money and structure - it won’t happen.

He is concerned for the north but at some point it would be nice if he could explain exactly how he’s going to serve the whole country.

But he’s all about the popularity. He claims to support various causes until he stands for a national role and then he rows back on them, pissing off both sides in the process. So he’s got no integrity.

People are not asking for the North to be priorities over the South.

They are wanting the various regions to have a fairer share of investment/influence/decision making.

This is not necessarily a bad thing for people in the South East (because the South West doesn't do any better than the North in the current situation). The completely unaffordable house prices in the South East is a prime example of a negative impact on average people from policies that keep an uneven distribution of power and opportunities in one location.

How many times do you see people from London and the South East on here, trapped in a place they can't afford to buy a house etc because they are tied to the area for work

Government policy needs to do the best thing for everyone on the country.

At least the opinion of the north will be given priority. The rest of the country - not so much.

There’s political capital and popularity in presenting yourself as the ordinary northern bloke who is wanting to use his position to boost the north. Never mind that as the Prime Minister his job is to represent the interests of the entire country.

These bloody northerners who have never left their mining village eh? Daring to have an opinion.

What planet and century do you live in?

The North is a pretty big area though right! It's not just Manchester that will benefit. If you're going to be like that about it then do Londoners want to cough up for the years of underinvestment of public money into the North and start leveling up that North South divide. We would very much appreciate that........ didn't think so? 🙄 Bore off.

thats the thing in politics is global now and you need to make deals left right and centre etc its not a one band country

Well, ideally yes, but as Keir has said, he'll find he gets entangled in world affairs whether he likes it or not, and they'll take up a lot of his time.

It's the same old story: you can say and promise all kinds of things when you're not actually in power. Once you are, you soon find out how restricted your options are in the real world.

If AB is going to be PM, he needs to work for the whole country and leave Manchester to someone else.

No. I think he understands the priorities of the people he wants to win over. If you have little to no hope of an affordable home and can't pay your bills or see a future for yourself and your children, what's going on in other countries and sustainability can seem like luxury concerns.
KS was very active in foreign affairs and has been criticised for neglect of the domestic side.
And I'm not sure 'the economy' is widely understood. What matters to many people is more money in their pockets and better quality of life, not the workings that go into achieving that, how much debt we're in, fiscal drag, GDP...the average person is not an economist.
I'm not sure about the devolution focus tbh. I don't think I'd have put that front and centre at this time. Particularly when there's a lot of people with scarily incompetent Reform councils who don't want to see them gaining any more power.

Not sure if anyone is aware but there is more to the country than London and the North.

Its great that you are happy to pay more for security as you feel it will be worth it, so hopefully that cost will be applied only to the North rather than the other regions having to pay for no additional benefit.

I quite like the idea of him all ‘a north no 10!’ and big Swinney sitting there raging.

Yes I most certainly would as it will only benefit the North him being in Manchester and allowing government to be less London-centric. London is not the centre of the universe, and as other posters have rightly said, plenty of other countries are doing it successfully.

Absolute nonsense. Boris Johnson and his dodgy Covid contracts are the biggest sources of corruption recently and I don’t think technically they were corruption, just very questionable.

Tell me all you know about the procurement process in local government? Civil service procurement can be long winded and complex to avoid accusations of corruption and then people bang on about bureaucracy. You can’t have transparent procurement without paperwork.

Another day another Burnham-bashing thread. Have a rest.

No one has been a PM until they become a PM... I think he could solve all socio-economic issues and people will complain about his eyebrows...or snobby jabs at his parochial (read: Northern) accent.

Absolutely. Surely there are more pressing problems for the country right now. He is just out for himself and his personal achievements unfortunately.

What do you mean by parochial?

We do that anyway, just with different people who have to run much bigger things which they mostly do via local authorities that are much harder to navigate as there's no consistency on who does what.

The problem that handing power to local mayors and councillors is it creates these people who hold all the power and it does in some cases goes to their heads

Hoping you get a more constructive response to your request for evidence than I did!

I agree and it's an interesting line he is going to follow. The problem is, we don't want it going too much the other way, where there are huge disparities. He's taking a big risk. I will give him that.

I listened and it was markedly different to the out going PM. It was better in many ways.

Every word of this. Even as a Labour supporter, I said the same when Theresa May became PM.

Why not? Councils don't have the power or money now to do much and we were talking about much wider areas than council areas.
Devolving power to regions make perfect sense because they are in a much better position to know what is actually needed in their region than Westminster.
The speech yesterday was about his vision for the UK ie domestic policy. You wouldn't expect him to cover foreign policy in that

Indeed. I wasn't clear and should have quoted the lengthy post I was replying to which was OP's "what's he done in Manchester."

His whole pitch is spreading that approach more widely, right?

But the problems of over-centralisation are where you see groups as disparate as the IEA, Res Foundation and IPPR, among many others, come together on agreeing the fundamentals of a problem (though their solutions predictably differ.) I'm hoping for really fundamental rethink of the settlement of powers, because the fragmented multiple approaches we currently run are the worst of all worlds.

Let's see that will spread across the country. Then it will be worth the celebration. Until then, it's a mayor who has improved a city.

Oh and made some bus drivers very happy.