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"Andy Burnham's case is, at its core, an argument about where good decisions get made, and his speech sets out a vision of bottom-up, place-based growth that rejects the old assumption that prosperity generated in one corner of the country will eventually reach the rest. He says nothing about artificial intelligence, yet his framework is arguably the one that Britain's approach to AI has been missing.

"Lucy Powell, Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, has noted that this new wave of devolution should place greater emphasis on preparing young people for the jobs of the future.

"UK AI policy has so far been highly centralised, organised around a small number of laboratories, investors and Whitehall units, and built on an implicit trickle-down theory: that capability concentrated in the centre will naturally diffuse to regions, sectors and workers over time. This reflects the broad ambitions of the AI Opportunities Action Plan, but regions each have distinct labour markets, industries and skills profiles. A single national strategy cannot fully account for these differences. Even within Greater Manchester there are multiple AI economies, making top-down policy difficult to design.

"The central question about AI and work is whether exposure becomes augmentation or substitution. Do we use AI to grow the economy and improve work, or simply to reduce costs? Where AI augments people, it can raise productivity, wages and the quality of work - the "good growth in every postcode" that Burnham describes. Where it substitutes for people without a clear transition plan, AI risks hollowing out local labour markets and widening the inequalities Burnham wants to close. Those outcomes are shaped not simply by the technology itself, but by skills policy, employment support, procurement and local industrial strategy - the very levers that greater devolution would move closer to communities.

"A "No 10 North", and the broader devolution settlement behind it, therefore creates a genuine opportunity to do AI differently through place-based AI for public good. Devolved institutions, working closely with local employers, colleges and communities, are often better placed than Whitehall to steer AI adoption towards augmentation rather than substitution, protect digital inclusion, and ensure that the benefits of AI are shared across local economies rather than concentrated in a handful of places.

"There is, however, a serious caution. Public bodies often underestimate the hidden costs of deploying AI systems, from data governance and oversight to workforce transition and the wider social costs of poorly managed change. Devolution without capability would simply move that mispricing closer to communities and could amplify it. Commentators have already questioned whether mayors and local authorities possess the capacity to exercise new powers effectively. That concern applies with particular force to AI. Power must arrive alongside funded analytical capability, shared standards and an inclusive innovation strategy.

"Burnham's instinct - that raising living standards across Britain should be the operating principle of government - is exactly the right starting point for the age of AI. If we want this technology to serve the whole country rather than a handful of postcodes, AI for public good will have to be place-based. Otherwise, whatever growth AI delivers will be neither genuinely good nor genuinely inclusive."