Andy Burnham’s emergence as Britain’s likely next Prime Minister is significant not simply because it heralds a change of leadership, but because it could place the country’s most prominent advocate of devolution at the head of government. His proposal to create a “No 10 North” and to shift power away from Whitehall is less an administrative innovation than a declaration that Britain’s highly centralised model has become an obstacle to economic renewal.

If implemented, it would mark the most ambitious attempt in decades to redraw the relationship between Westminster and the rest of the United Kingdom. At the heart of Burnham’s argument is a simple proposition: no economy can realise its full potential when political authority, public investment and economic opportunity remain concentrated in a single city. Britain’s dependence on London has produced one of the widest regional productivity gaps among advanced economies, leaving successive governments struggling to revive towns and cities that have lagged behind the capital for decades.

Mr Burnham believes stronger local governments, armed........

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