Westminster be warned – Britain’s future will be decided in the north. Get on the right side of that | Andy Burnham

As political and business leaders meet for the Convention of the North, our position is clear: we need a genuine new deal, and soon. Whenever the next general election comes, two things already seem clear: it will be unlike any we have experienced before, and it will be won or lost in the north of England. This is the new political reality of 2025.

We need to face up to it fully now and start preparing the ground for a campaign that won’t be a traditional choice from the lineup of the main parties but of two fundamentally different worldviews. The stakes are extraordinarily high. The world is changing at a pace we haven’t experienced before. Yet UK politics still, at times, seems frustratingly stuck in decades-old default positions. Going forward, a vision for growth based on London, Oxford and Cambridge – the “golden triangle” – and airport expansion in the south-east is only justifiable if balanced by a new deal for the north; one that offers at least an equal ambition for economic, social and environmental renewal.

By my reckoning, Labour mayors and ministers have three months in which to write that new story for the north so that it can be signed off at the spending review in June and delivered over the rest of this parliament. By the time the country next goes to the polls, we need to be able to point to tangible results telling a compelling story of how the second quarter of this century will be better than the false promises of a Northern Powerhouse and levelling up in the first.

This is a colossal challenge but I am confident we can rise to it – starting today with political and business leaders gathering in Preston for the sixth Convention of the North. My confidence comes from the fact that the north is already in a unique position. With a set of devolution arrangements covering more than 80% of the population, rising to 90% in May 2026, we have a greater ability to deliver more quickly than other parts of England.

It is also based on a belief that, for the first time in 50 years, there is a credible path towards the re-industrialisation of the north. The fight that is coming will not be won by pandering to the alternative worldview, as the Conservative party is doing. Instead, we must take it on directly.

By setting its face against net zero, Reform UK is turning its back on the north’s best chance of bringing back high-quality, well-paid jobs in large numbers, and two things have happened this week that should give us courage to stick to our guns. First, the CBI reported on Monday how the net zero sector grew by 10.1% in 2024 and now has almost a million jobs, with an average annual wage paying higher than the national average. Encouragingly, the north is playing a real role in this growth story. With the right investment now, our unique geography means we could be a global player in the green economy and, in time, a net exporter of green energy.

The second inconvenient truth for Reform is the main reason for the rise in energy prices. According to Ofgem, it is more driven by gas than anything else. When you combine that with a privatisation that left the British public paying way more for energy than people in other countries, arch-Thatcherites Nigel Farage, Richard Tice and Rupert Lowe suddenly find themselves very much on the wrong side of the argument.

The arch-Thatcherites were, of course, the same people who advocated the sell-off of council homes in the 1980s and this brings me to the second component of what could be a compelling Labour plan for the north. With more available land than other parts of England, we are in the position of being able to make a quicker and bigger contribution to the mission of 1.5m new homes. However, rather than building just any homes, there is a clear case for making at least a third social homes and building the majority in the north by the next election as a new generation of council homes.

Green homes that are cheaper to rent and cheaper to run would show a serious intent to improve the lives of our residents and remove our communities from the grip of the housing crisis. But this new drive would also reinforce the north’s green energy revolution and bring forward the reform of a broken energy market towards more localised solutions.

It would also open up a huge number of new training opportunities for young people. In communities that have suffered de-industrialisation, there is a vacuum left by an English education system that has been too focused on the traditional university route. This is another Whitehall default setting that must be changed.

In Greater Manchester, two-thirds of young people don’t take the university route. We need to do much better by them. Our Greater Manchester Baccalaurate (MBacc) is based on the principle of two equal paths at 14 – one academic, one technical – and lays out a clear path towards green construction and other priority sectors. If adopted across the north, it would change the perception that the left does not care about those who seek technical qualifications.