The race for Greater Manchester mayor

The regeneration of Manchester’s corn exchange, a paved, baroque indoor plaza at the centre of the city, is truly remarkable. If you can hear yourself above the clinking of glasses, the soft, distant clash of dishes, and the rolling laughter and chatter, you can’t help but reflect on the transformation of the 19th century trading floor into a buzzing social hub.

Travel back 150 years and ask a Victorian trader about ‘Manchesterism’, he’d likely regale you with talk of free trade and deregulation. Fast forward to the bars and restaurants of the Exchange today, and Manchesterism means something different.

Greater Manchester has become the standard-bearer for English devolution. And while the region’s regeneration predates Burnham, he has been its most vocal proponent, turning the mayoralty into one of the most influential roles in local government. Whoever succeeds him will inherit responsibility not only for transport, housing, planning and economic growth, but also for maintaining the momentum behind one of the UK's most successful devolved administrations.

With a polling day of July 30th, all eyes now turn to the candidates. Bev Craig, the Manchester City Council leader, has been officially announced as Labour’s candidate. Craig will face Geraldine Coggins for the Green Party, Richard Kilpatrick for the Liberal Democrats and Marlon West for Restore Britain. The Conservatives and Reform UK have yet to announce their candidates, although reports have linked the latter party with former mayoral candidate Dan Barker and Manchester councillor Sian Astley.

Yet whoever emerges victorious, the mechanics of what happens when one of England’s most powerful devolved offices falls vacant mid-term deserve just as much attention.

Replacing Burnham will be a significant undertaking. Organising a mayoral election across a city region of almost three million residents is expected to cost around £4.7million, underlining both the scale of the office and the importance of the decision facing voters.

This isn’t just a routine local by-election. The Greater Manchester Combined Authority spans ten councils – Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan – representing the UK’s second largest, and fastest-growing, city-region. The outcome will have regional and national significance, but so too will the process of administering it.

A by-election is unavoidably expensive, and this comes at a time when local government finances remain under sustained pressure and only weeks after councils incurred the cost of the scheduled local elections. But the financial burden tells only part of the story.

Running an election of this scale demands significant operational capacity. Returning officers and their teams must secure polling venues, recruit and train staff, administer postal votes, print and distribute ballot papers, staff polling stations and conduct verification and counts within tightly prescribed legal timetables. Greater Manchester's electoral administrators have only recently delivered local elections and, in recent months, have also overseen the parliamentary by-elections in Gorton and Denton and Makerfield. The cumulative effect is a form of electoral fatigue that is rarely discussed outside town halls but places considerable pressure on a relatively small pool of specialist staff.

The introduction of the SV system, where voters are encouraged to give a first and second preference, adds another layer of administrative complexity. If no candidate wins more than 50% of the vote, the bottom candidates are swept from contention and the top two proceed to a run-off, with second preferences coming into play.

With Reform, and potentially the Greens, on the rise, the contest is also far less likely to be a one-horse race – Burnham has averaged 65% of the vote at the previous three. Close votes always take longer to count and increase the chances of recounts being needed.

Combined with the compressed timetable and the scale of the electorate, these extra layers of complexity will place additional demands on electoral teams already operating under considerable pressure.

This election is about far more than replacing Andy Burnham. It is a stress test for the resilience of England's devolved institutions. English devolution has evolved rapidly over the past decade, but relatively little attention has been paid to what happens when one of these offices falls vacant unexpectedly. This election will offer the first real indication of how robust those arrangements are when put under pressure.

Patricia Grinyer is a partner at Weightmans.