Andy Burnham insisted Britain needs to go back to the 1970s today as he put the ‘wealthy’ South on notice for his Downing Street takeover.

Delivering his first big speech in Manchester, the PM-in-waiting said the country had not been working for ‘ordinary people’ since before Thatcher.

He argued that ‘trickle down’ economics must be ditched and replaced with a Left-wing concept of ‘good growth’. That included more state ownership and the ‘biggest council house-building programme since the post-war period’.

Echoing the Corbynite slogan ‘for the many’, Mr Burnham said he wanted to put ‘hope in every heart’ by ‘rebalancing’ power and money away from Westminster. He suggested his Government would copy German post-reunification legislation dictating that all states must have ‘equivalent living standards’.

The ‘nerve centre’ for his so-called ‘Manchesterism’ will be a ‘No10 North’ based in the city – which critics say will be impractical and hugely expensive.

But the overwhelming Labour leadership favourite barely gave any hard details of his plans, and did not even take questions from the media. The Daily Mail’s sketchwriter Quentin Letts was barred from attending.

Read more: The Muppet Show, or, ‘Back to the 1970s with Burnham: State ownership, council house bonanza and more taxes on the agenda in Northern coup’