Burnham and Al-Turabi: The Surprise of Decentralisation in Politics

In politics, comparisons are not necessarily about drawing parallels. Rather, they are a way of exploring how ideas separated by geography and ideology can converge around the same fundamental question. Perhaps one of the most surprising comparisons is that between Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham and the late Sudanese Islamic thinker Dr Hassan Al-Turabi. It is difficult to imagine two figures from more contrasting worlds: the former emerged from Britain’s Labour tradition, shaped by the norms of liberal democracy; the latter was one of the leading theorists of political Islam in the twentieth century, whose intellectual and political journey unfolded in a country that has rarely enjoyed lasting stability. History, however, shows that ideas do not recognise geographical boundaries, and […]