Over 90 Labour MPs Warn Burnham: Run Reindustrialisation From No 10 North or Fail

More than 90 backbench Labour MPs are warning that Andy Burnham's pledge to reindustrialise Britain is doomed to fail unless he drives it decisively from No 10 North, his new Manchester outpost. Their warning comes in a briefing paper seen by the Guardian, days before the chancellor's first budget.

John Healey, who delivers that budget on Wednesday, used his Labour conference speech last month to promise a "new age of industrialisation." Burnham himself has framed rebuilding UK industrial capacity as central to his pledge of "good growth in every postcode." The backbenchers don't doubt the intent. They doubt the machinery of government can deliver it.

What does the briefing paper actually say?

The core claim is blunt: decades of deindustrialisation and deregulation have stripped the state of the knowledge it needs to run an industrial strategy. "The state has lost capacity and has acquired a worrying set of behaviours which will inhibit reindustrialisation. The state has become less knowledgable about the state of the economy and our businesses, unable to comprehensively plan and slow to make decisions," the paper says.

The group's fix has three parts:

• Pass a new Reindustrialisation Act that sets clear targets for job creation through rebuilt manufacturing capacity, with ministers held accountable against those targets.
• Hand oversight of the entire effort to first secretary Louise Haigh, based at No 10 North — the Manchester outpost Burnham established in July, which has already absorbed some responsibility for growth policy.
• Convert the National Wealth Fund, the arm's-length body that invests in promising businesses, into a Reindustrialisation Development Corporation whose primary job is supplying capital to rebuild UK industry.

"If we do not plan for reindustrialisation, we cannot achieve it," the group argues. That sentence is the whole paper in one line.

Who is behind it?

Andy MacNae, the MP for Rossendale and Darwen, chairs the group. He's explicit that the problem isn't the PM's or the chancellor's commitment — it's institutional drift. "I've got absolutely no doubt about Andy or John's commitment to this, but there is a kind of inertia in government, within the civil service, within economic orthodoxy, that still says that growth policy is about cities – it's about the places that are already doing well," MacNae said.

Reindustrialisation, he said, must instead be about "delivering jobs to the places that need them most." He added: "It's about making things again, and it's about making the things that give us national resilience in a turbulent world."

MacNae pointed to the government's recent decision to nationalise British Steel as evidence of the scale required, and argued that reindustrialisation cuts across the whole of government — from procurement rules to education policy.

Why do these MPs think Whitehall won't move on its own?

Steve Yemm, MP for Mansfield, a former mining constituency, framed it as a global race Whitehall is refusing to run. "Countries around the world are reindustrialising, yet too many in Whitehall still treat industrial policy as dangerous nostalgia. We need the prime minister's full backing to challenge those outdated assumptions," Yemm said.

Lorraine Beavers, MP for Blackpool North and Fleetwood, backed the reindustrialisation promise for constituencies like hers — with a caveat drawn from two years in parliament. "If I have learned anything since becoming an MP two years ago, it's that Whitehall doesn't fix a problem unless it is told to," she said.

What's already on the table?

Labour's industrial strategy, published while Keir Starmer was prime minister, identified eight sectors ripe for growth, including advanced manufacturing, clean energy and defence. Healey, for his part, invited a young apprentice who had worked on building a new Mersey ferry to his conference speech, and told delegates Labour would "get Britain growing. With hope for our young people. With good work, good jobs and a new age of industrialisation."

Wednesday's budget is the first concrete test of whether that rhetoric gets numbers attached. The 90-plus MPs making this argument have essentially set the benchmark: legislation, targets, a named minister and a capital vehicle — or the industrial age stays a speech.