It may sound a little naff, but Manchester is a city I’m genuinely proud to call home. Not least because the city where I was born, and where I still live, has been the backdrop to so many game-changing moments in history.
Manchester deserves better than becoming the fall guy because of one man’s misplaced determination to prove that government is not solely the preserve of Westminster
Both the suffrage movement and the Vegetarian Society were founded here (our causes are nothing if not varied). The world’s first stored-program computer was built in the city, while Manchester also gave birth to modern chemistry, nuclear physics, and stood at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution. Oh, and we gave the world Liam and Noel Gallagher too.
Given such a lustrous legacy, it’s hard not to feel resentful as Andy Burnham threatens to turn the city into something of a joke. For if, as seems increasingly likely, he becomes prime minister in a few weeks’ time, the recently crowned Makerfield MP plans to establish a northern No. 10 in Manchester – a risible, unworkable notion that reduces my hometown to a performative piece of score-settling gimmickry.
How can such a move be anything other than a joke when it makes no practical sense? Does the city’s former metro mayor have no grasp of the constitutional reality of being prime minister? It’s not some plum executive gig in which the holder can choose to work – or govern – from home. The role is anchored in Westminster, with cabinet meetings and sessions in the House of Commons.
