Soundings

Last week Labor Party leader Andy Burnham was sworn in as the seventh Prime Minister (PM) of the United Kingdom (UK) in 10 years. (Historically the average tenure of a UK PM is closer to five years.) The heightened turnover began with David Cameron’s resignation in July 2016 after the Brexit referendum, the same year, incidentally, that Donald Trump first won the White House.

A decade in, this turnover seems symptomatic of something larger. Europe’s structural challenges of low growth, elevated debt levels, and multi-layered regulations persist, even as climate change, immigration, and war pose new and more acute challenges. An upheaval in economic, political, and cultural norms, globally, has weakened the alliances and partnerships required to solve increasingly complex problems.

In a historic speech at Davos in January, Canadian Prime Minister (and former Governor of the Bank of England) Mark Carney remarked on the “rupture” of a rules-based international order established at the end of World War II. In his view, the rise of self-interested great powers necessitates a new world order where middle power countries form “different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests.”

Burnham steps into this moment as an unusually apt messenger. As Mayor of Greater Manchester, Burnham championed “Manchesterism” — a devolution-and-reindustrialization agenda that pushes power and investment away from Westminster and toward local government.  It’s a domestic echo of Carney’s global thesis: when the center can no longer be trusted to hold, resilience must be built closer to home. Whether that instinct scales from Manchester City Hall to Downing Street – amid the larger challenges facing the United Kingdom and the continent – is the open question of his premiership.

We wish Mr. Burnham well, and knowing him to be a devotee of the Smiths, honor him with this New (World) Order playlist that may also nod to next week’s topic du jour.

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