LONDON — Andy Burnham’s nine years as mayor of Greater Manchester put him on the map.
He won plaudits for capping bus fares and standing up to Westminster during the Covid pandemic.
Now he wants to bring more devolution to Downing Street, and is mooting plans to create a northern campus for No. 10 if he becomes prime minister in a few weeks time.
But does running a city really prepare you to run the country? Boris Johnson — the last charismatic former city mayor to become PM — was ousted after just three chaotic years in office.
POLITICO’s Westminster Insider podcast spoke to five mayors — current and former — about how Burnham’s old job might help him, and where it could hold him back.
Delivery, delivery, delivery
Andy Street, former mayor of the West Midlands, which includes the U.K.’s second largest city Birmingham, became a metro mayor at the same time as Burnham in 2017.
Street and Burnham — known as the “Two Andys” — both had to set up offices from scratch after being elected to lead newly created mayoralties.
“We’d built that institution from nothing, no desk, no PA, no money, nothing to something that was spending billions of pounds,” says Street.
“There are huge similarities between the mayoral job and a chief executive’s job,” Street adds, noting normal political jobs are usually less executive and delivery focused.
“The big advantage of mayor is you have to deliver. There’s no hiding. There’s one person who’s accountable. And I do think that is an incredibly powerful thing in preparing someone for high office,” he says.
Claire Ward, a former Labour MP who was a minister in Gordon Brown’s government before being elected as East Midlands mayor in 2024, a region which includes the cities of Leicester and Nottingham, even reckons mayors have “far more authority, power” than junior ministers.
Learning to woo investors
A big part of the mayoral job is traveling overseas to convince financial bigwigs your city is the place to spend their cash.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan speaks during an interview at City Hall in London on Jan. 12, 2026. | Adrien Dennis/AFP via Getty ImagesLondon Mayor Sadiq Khan memorably met the owner of a cannabis farm in Los Angeles when he visited the U.S. in 2022. Burnham travelled to Japan to convince food manufacturer Mizkan to invest £17 million into its local factory in 2025.
Closer to home, mayors must also manage competing interests for any large projects.
Oliver Coppard, South Yorkshire’s mayor, whose region includes the northern cities of Sheffield and Doncaster, describes his role in reopening his local Doncaster-Sheffield Airport: “If there was no mayor of South Yorkshire, the airport would stay closed, because there is no other way. People wanted us to solve it and actually the processes are just so slow. We’ve got a landowner who owns the airport who didn’t want to give up control, who didn’t want to sell it. And in that situation, how does a community exercise agency?” he says.
Relationships are everything
Mayors need to keep Westminster on side to get anything done.
West of England Mayor Helen Godwin, whose region includes the cities of Bristol and Bath, says the relationship between the mayoralties and Westminster is incredible important. She was “surprised” by the level of access she had to “government SpAds, ministers and to officials” when she was elected.
A scheme for free bus travel for children was trialed in her region, and is now being rolled out nationally after a collaboration with Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander.
While mayors do gain experience working between different government departments, they are largely doing so outside the political machine.
The past and present mayors Westminster Insider spoke to agree it is a relief being out of the cut-and-thrust of Westminster — something Burnham has dived right back into.
“It’s a totally different job. So that part of it and that part, no question, I would find that challenging and I think anyone moving from a mayoral model to a party management model would find it difficult,” Street says.
Hands off the money
As prime minister, Burnham will be in charge of not just spending money but generating revenue for Treasury’s coffers. So constrained are mayors financially that almost every one has, at some point, called for more devolution on taxes.
Mayors’ financial firepower is “very, very minor,” says Street.
“It is a very different job when you are basically seeking money from Westminster than you are having to decide on the tax and spend piece of the whole country,” Street adds.
As prime minister, Burnham will be in charge of not just spending money but generating revenue for Treasury’s coffers. | Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesWard, the East Midlands mayor, adds: “We’ve not been able to make as many decisions as we would like to. So for me, I don’t have all the flexibilities on funding. I can’t make decisions to shift, you know, aspect some parts of the budget from capital to revenue. So I don’t have those full flexibilities.”
A personal mandate
Metro mayors are directly elected — they have a personal mandate from the people they serve, and are therefore well-acquainted with copping the blame if things go wrong. Not a bad skill to have as prime minister.
Godwin, the West of England mayor, says: “Our personal mandates will be bigger than any MP in terms of voter numbers. I think Sadiq’s mandate is the biggest in U.K. history, in terms of the number of people who physically put a cross against his name.”
Still, mayors with limited powers are “reacting to events” rather than driving them.
“We are also reacting to where the country’s at — macroeconomics, geopolitics. Whereas if you’re going for the big job, then you’re a part of that and you’re making those decisions,” Godwin says.
Of course, that gives mayors the perennial get-out-of-jail free card of blaming Westminster, something Burnham did regularly during his stint as Manchester mayor on policies from homelessness to housing.
Street says: “We each had our begging bowl out to central government, it was all central government fault. And if I’m honest, that was the story the Labour mayors were always telling.”
Out of the WhatsApp group, and into the fire
If Burnham does find himself missing his old Labour mayoral pals, he should be able to stay in touch.
“I think we can keep him in the Labour mayors’ WhatsApp chat,” says Kim McGuinness, North East mayor, whose authority includes the cities of Newcastle and Sunderland.
Though she concedes: “If he becomes the prime minister, then he’s probably not going to want to be in that group chat anymore.”