Keir Starmer’s resignation as Prime Minister has triggered another period of political upheaval in Westminster – and across the North.
After less than two years in office, Starmer announced he would step down following mounting pressure from within the Labour Party, clearing the path for a leadership contest that is widely expected to be won by newly elected Makerfield MP and former Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham.
For the creative, digital and technology sectors, however, the focus is less on personalities and more on priorities. Whoever takes the keys to Number 10 will inherit an economy grappling with sluggish growth, skills shortages, regional inequalities and the transformative impact of artificial intelligence.
And if Burnham does become Britain’s next Prime Minister, it would mark the first time in decades that the country’s leader has emerged directly from the North’s political ecosystem.
So what does Northern industry want to see from the next occupant of Downing Street?
Put growth and entrepreneurship first
For Leeds entrepreneur and investor Keith Griffiths, founder of The Entrepreneur Festival and former founder of UKREiiF, the priority should be about putting wealth creative top of the agenda.a
“With Keir Starmer gone, Labour faces a defining choice: double down on wealth redistribution or put wealth creation back at the centre of its mission,” he said. “The UK’s productivity crisis won’t be solved by managing decline – growth is the precondition for better public services, higher living standards and economic opportunity.
“Andy Burnham has argued for more power to be devolved to regions, but devolution alone isn’t a growth strategy. What the UK needs now is a government that understands how businesses actually grow – from startup and scale-up through innovation, investment and exit.
“Entrepreneurs create jobs, drive productivity and generate the wealth that funds everything else, yet too often policy is designed around political cycles rather than business realities.
“The next generation of economic leadership needs to spend less time talking about entrepreneurs and more time listening to them. The founders who have built, scaled and exited businesses understand where the opportunities for growth really are. If Labour wants to rebuild the economy, it must make supporting entrepreneurship a national priority, not an afterthought.”
His comments reflect a broader frustration among founders that economic policy is too often designed around short-term political cycles rather than the realities of building and scaling businesses.
Back founders, not just funders
Peter Hopton, investor, founder and chair of Growing Venture.Community, told Prolific North government needs to rethink how business support and venture capital are structured.
“For me supporting businesses is about empowering those that build companies (or have built companies before) to help others build companies, so real skills and experience are transferred in this profession.
“There is confusion in the system between financial professions and the entrepreneurial profession of building companies.
“This focus needs to encompass acceleration, business support and investment. I want to see an initiative to cornerstone the next generation of venture capitalists as people who’ve built before, investing in their area of expertise.
“It’s important that we correct regional venture capital monopolies and duopolies and address the imbalance between US and UK venture capital regarding the percentage of VCs who have built companies before.
“After all, you wouldn’t normally have a mortgage lender tell someone how to build a house.”
His intervention highlights a long-running challenge for Northern businesses – access to investment outside London and the South East.
Think beyond AI as a cost-cutting tool
While growth and entrepreneurship feature prominently on business leaders’ wish lists, others argue the next Prime Minister must take a longer-term view of how technology, research and innovation shape the economy.
Dr Richard Whittle, Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Public Policy at Salford Business School, believes the UK needs to stop trying to compete directly with the US and China in the race to build frontier AI models and instead focus on areas where it already has a competitive advantage.
“Smart AI sovereignty should be the watchword. The UK will not win a spending race to build frontier models against the US and China, and it should not try.
“Our advantage lies elsewhere, in the unique national assets we already hold, in enviable datasets across the UK, and in our capacity to turn AI onto concrete scientific breakthroughs in life sciences, materials, clean energy and in business services.”
Whittle argues Britain should focus less on owning AI models and more on extracting value from its research base, data assets and universities.
“The prize for the UK is in not owning the models. We don’t and we don’t have the investment firepower to do so. Our prize lies in using AI, and exploiting our long-term data investments.
“That means treating data sovereignty as seriously as we treat energy security, with public stewardship that captures value for citizens rather than handing it cheaply to whoever arrives first.”
He also warned against viewing AI purely through the lens of productivity and cost reduction.
“How we as a country view AI needs to radically change. The previous AI opportunities plan – at its heart – saw AI as an efficiency tool, something to lower the costs of delivery.
“We need to move away from simply using AI to do what we have always done, but more cheaply, to using AI to produce value for us. Value that is shared across the economy.”
For Whittle, universities must play a central role in that future. “The next Prime Minister also needs to retire the tired piece of Treasury orthodoxy that universities are a transactional cost to be managed down rather than a public good to be invested in.
“Inclusive growth does not happen without them. Manchester’s AI ecosystem is the proof of concept the rest of the country should study, anchored by its universities, its devolved leadership, and a pipeline from research into the regional economy.”
Give the North the tools to succeed
For Manchester digital agency leader Julaine Speight, co-owner of First Internet, the next Prime Minister must look beyond Westminster and recognise the economic strength already present in the regions.
“Stop treating the North as a problem to be managed and start treating it as an opportunity to be backed,” she said. “The creative and digital economy here in Manchester is genuinely world-class. It’s the largest AI sector outside London and the South East, the biggest concentration of creative businesses outside the capital, a screen industry that’s punching well above its weight.
“That didn’t happen by accident, and it won’t keep growing without serious investment and genuine devolved power.
“Skills is the most urgent issue for our sector right now. We need a post-16 education policy that reflects regional economies, not a one-size-fits-all national system that’s still built around getting everyone to university.
“And on AI, the conversation needs to move beyond frontier labs — most businesses in the regions need practical support adopting it, not another government task force.
“The next PM who gets all of this and governs accordingly won’t just be good for Manchester. They’ll be good for the whole country.”
Her comments echo arguments Burnham himself has made repeatedly during his time as Mayor of Greater Manchester, where he has championed devolution, transport integration and greater regional autonomy.
A Northern moment?
Burnham’s supporters have long argued that his success in Greater Manchester offers a blueprint for national renewal.
His victory in the Makerfield by-election last week was framed by allies as evidence that Labour can reconnect with voters in towns and cities that have become increasingly volatile political battlegrounds.
In his own statement following Starmer’s resignation, Burnham said the country wanted “progress on economic growth, cost of living, public services, housing and opportunities for the next generation” and argued that political change should never distract from improving people’s lives.
But Burnham’s Northernness may not be seen as an asset everywhere.
While his Greater Manchester record gives him a powerful story to tell in the North, some, including those in London’s financial services sector, are already questioning whether it is enough to reassure markets.
According to reporting by eFinancialCareers, one London hedge fund founder described the situation as “all a mess”, while a senior trader said Burnham’s credibility would be tested because he had built his popularity “fighting Westminster”.
Another senior trader warned that repeated changes of Prime Minister were damaging the UK’s reputation for stability, while one macro hedge fund manager said Burnham would need to appoint a credible figure at the Treasury if he wanted to win the confidence of markets.
That tension may become one of the defining questions of the transition: can Burnham turn his Northern identity into a national economic programme, or will Westminster and the City see it as a regional brand rather than a governing strategy?
