Manchesterism: Burnham vs. Cobden

The new buzzword recently being cited in the media in recent weeks is ‘Manchesterism’ when referring to recent Mayor of Manchester and now Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

However, very few people realise that that original meaning of the word harks back to the 19th century and Richard Cobden who was a liberal party politician, one of the chief architects behind the repeal of the corn laws and a prominent advocate of free trade.

In this article, I aim to set out the difference between Burnham’s new Manchesterism and Cobden’s original and I will argue that Cobden’s version trumps Burnham’s.

The origins of Manchesterism as associated with Cobden

Richard Cobden (1804-1865) was born at Dunford, near Midhurst, Sussex on 3 June 1804 and died in London on 2 April 1865. Educated locally and at a boarding school in Yorkshire, he worked in his uncle’s London warehouse before becoming partner in a calico-printing works in North Lancashire.

Back in the 1800s, Manchester was the beating heart of the world’s textile industry. The city buzzed with factory workers, but life wasn’t easy for them—mainly because of the Corn Laws. These laws slapped tariffs on imported wheat, making bread and other staples a lot more expensive than they needed to be. Rich landowners loved the Corn Laws, because they reduced foreign competition and kept grain prices artificially high. That meant bigger profits for them as more people moved into cities. For factory workers who mainly lived in the north, the laws were a real headache. Prices kept increasing, so mill owners had to boost wages just to keep people from starving. This resulted in higher production costs which pushed up the price of the finished textiles, and Manchester’s textile products started losing their competitiveness in export markets.

Manchesterism emerges

As a result of this, Manchesterism (or the Manchester school of Liberalism, as it came to be known as) emerged. It had three principal components:

1. Free-Trade: The belief that unrestricted international commerce would lower prices for essential goods and foster global peace by making nations economically interdependent.
2. Repeal of the Corn Laws: The movement’s most famous campaign, which was successful in achieving repeal of tariffs that had kept food prices artificially high.
3. Laissez-Faire Capitalism: Strong opposition to state intervention, monopolies, and aristocratic privilege, paired with a push for a meritocratic industrial and free market economy.

Each component had the following benefits:

Free Trade

Free trade lowers prices to consumers, increases product variety, and drives economic growth by eliminating tariffs and quotas. It allows countries to specialise in areas where they have a comparative advantage, leading to higher global efficiency, increased innovation, and stronger international cooperation, explained as follows:

1. Lower Prices & Greater Choice: By removing import barriers, consumers and businesses access cheaper goods and a wider variety of products.
2. Comparative Advantage: Nations specialise in producing goods at the lowest opportunity cost, maximising global output.
3. Economic Growth: Expanded market access allows firms to achieve economies of scale, promoting innovation and job creation.

Repeal of the Corn Laws

The repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 by Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel (a policy that was spearheaded by Richard Cobden) provided major economic and social benefits, primarily lowering the cost of living, boosting industrial manufacturing, and establishing Great Britain as a global leader in free trade. Other key advantages included:

1. Lower Food Prices: eliminating the 28% tariff on imported grain forced domestic grain prices to fall by roughly 10%. This provided immediate relief to the working class.
2. Booming Global Exports: Total British exports grew by roughly 5%. This expansion occurred because foreign trading partners gained the capital to purchase British products.
3. Erosion of Feudal Privileges: The repeal reduced the disproportionate political and financial monopoly of the wealthy top 10% aristocrats and land-owning classes.

Laissez-faire capitalism

Laissez-faire capitalism is an economic system with minimal or no government interference. This drives rapid innovation, maximises individual economic freedom, and reduces bureaucratic inefficiency. By allowing supply and demand to self-regulate the market, it encourages fierce competition that lowers consumer prices and boosts overall prosperity.

Other key advantages include:

1. Maximum innovation: Companies are driven to create and improve products quickly to gain a market advantage. Without regulatory red tape, startups can easily take risks and pioneer new technologies.
2. Increased efficiency: Firms have strong incentives to work productively and keep costs low to avoid going out of business.
3. Reduced bureaucracy and corruption: Removing the government from business affairs prevents the inefficiencies, lobbying, and cronyism that often go with heavy bureaucratic control.

Manchesterism associated with Burnham

Andy Burnham, now Prime Minister, is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Makerfield since June 2026. A member of the Labour and Co-operative Party, he was Mayor of Greater Manchester from 2017 to 2026. Prior to this, from 2001 to 2017 he was MP for Leigh and held several cabinet positions, lastly as Secretary of State for Health from 2009 to 2010 under Gordon Brown. Coming from the ‘soft left’ wing of The Labour Party, his ideology is often described as ‘Manchesterism’.

Burnham has characterised his Manchesterism as ‘the end of neo-liberalism, ‘business-friendly socialism’ and a ‘modern and functional response to the high-inequality, low-growth trap that came from the 1980s drive to privatise economic power and over centralise political power in the Treasury’.

In a speech to the Centre for Cities, he described it as a perspective that aimed to combine economic development with social benefits, with policies designed to explicitly channel the proceeds of growth towards communities, rejecting trickle-down economics. As examples of such policies, he cited re-establishing public control of buses through the creation of the Bee Network and setting up the Good Growth Fund, which provided £1 billion for three projects in each of Greater Manchester’s boroughs.

He stressed that such initiatives were only made possible by devolution, countering historical trends of political centralisation, and he also advocated increased devolution of fiscal powers to the regions of England not just in Manchester, but beyond.

Burnham’s version of Manchesterism has three principal components:

1. Devolution: the statutory transfer of power and responsibility from a central government to subnational levels, such as regional or local authorities. It decentralises political decision-making so that communities can better manage local issues like transport, housing, and healthcare.
2. Public control: this refers to the regulation, oversight, or ownership of essential services by the government or local authorities to ensure they serve the community’s interests. It offers an intermediate alternative between a completely free, deregulated market and full state ownership. The most notable example of this is the ‘Bee Network’ in Manchester – an integrated transport system consisting of buses, trams, and cycle routes.
3. Regeneration of places: is a long-term, multidimensional process designed to reverse economic, social, and physical decline in a specific area. It aims to break cycles of poverty and dereliction by attracting new investment, creating jobs, upgrading infrastructure, and improving the overall quality of life for residents of that area.

These benefits may be expanded as follows:

Devolution

Devolution refers to the transferring powers from central government to local governments (local and combined authorities). The concept centres around giving combined and local authorities more control over decision-making, enabling them to tailor policies to their specific economic, social, and geographic circumstances.

1. Tailored Public Services: local leaders better understand regional needs, allowing them to design specific strategies for healthcare, education, and social care.
2. Economic Growth: Regions can directly control economic development, housing, and transportation networks to stimulate job creation and attract investment.
3. Democratic Accountability: Moving decision-making closer to communities gives residents a stronger voice and ensures leaders are directly responsible for local outcomes.

Public Control

Public control means services managed by a government or community. This approach guarantees fair access for everyone, stops monopolies from overcharging, and prioritises essential needs over profiteering. For example, local water and public transport can serve every neighbourhood safely and affordably.

1. Fair Prices: Private businesses exist to maximise profit. Public services aim to simply cover costs (with a surplus for maintenance and capital reinvestment). This means lower prices for essentials like water supply and public transport.
2. Equal Access: A private company might ignore sparsely populated areas because serving them is not profitable. Public control ensures that everyone gets the same service, regardless of where they live.
3. Safety Rules: Governments can set and enforce strict rules to protect workers and the environment. Private companies may cut corners to save money.

Regeneration of places

Regeneration breathes new life into neglected areas. It tackles economic decline and environmental issues by transforming old, empty spaces into thriving hubs. Key benefits include job creation, building modern and energy-efficient homes, and boosting local businesses. Public health is also improved by creating parks and upgrading transport links.

1. Boost the economy: Regeneration turns run-down areas into attractive places for new businesses. This brings new jobs, raises local incomes, and increases property values. An example is the revitalisation of old industrial areas, such as Battersea Power Station in London, which brought thousands of new jobs and homes as well as hundreds of businesses to a once-abandoned site.
2. Infrastructure is upgraded: Old buildings and broken roads make life hard for everyone. Regeneration fixes this by modernising transport networks, upgrading utility connections, and paving safe walkways. Better roads and trains mean shorter, easier commutes to work, schools, and hospitals.
3. Environmental benefits: Instead of building new towns on open nature fields, regeneration repurposes pre-used city land. New buildings use energy-efficient designs to lower carbon emissions. Projects also add green spaces like trees, gardens, and parks. These green spaces clean the air, reduce noise, and help prevent flooding.

Why does Cobden’s version trumps Burnham?

Although I come from a classical liberal perspective myself similar to that of Cobden, I will aim to be impartial in explaining why I believe that his version trumps Burnham’s. There is one area in particular which I believe is more persuasive from a Cobden perspective, namely laissez- fair capitalism.

Despite state intervention having some merits, most notably when correcting market failures, I still believe that free-market capitalism (otherwise known as laissez-faire capitalism) is a more favourable method for securing economic success and improved living standards across the board. My reasoning is summarised as follows:

1. High efficiency: Markets quickly adjust to what people want. When supply is low and demand is high, prices go up. This encourages companies to increase production of that item.
2. Fast innovation: The profit motive pushes companies to build better and cheaper products to beat their rivals. This constant change is called “creative destruction”.
3. Economic Growth: Historically, open markets have helped reduce poverty and raised living standards around the world by creating more wealth and jobs.

I hope my arguments have succeeded in making a convincing case for preferring Cobden’s version of Manchesterism over Burnham’s, most notably by highlighting some of the convincing arguments associated with laissez-fair capitalism over statist policies, which seek to undermine the free-market.

Kayed Al-Haddad is spokesperson for The Liberal Party for Economics, Fiscal Policy and Monetary Policy.