Here in my office on a quiet Manchester morning, with the air surprisingly warm beneath a gunmetal sky, the conditions are ripe for making inroads into a pile of paperwork. Beyond my window, the city feels sluggish. With schools out for summer, the roads are quieter. Manchester’s legendary verve and vibrancy have clearly been mothballed for the holiday period.
WFH – working from holiday, that is – is counterintuitive
All of which, you might think, would create the perfect environment for our Prime Minister – just two weeks into the job – to make the most of long weekends up here and power through his formidable in-tray. (He has pledged to work in Manchester every Friday and has a family home on the outskirts of Wigan).
Surely the tranquillity would offer an opportunity to focus on dealing with the demands of his fledgling premiership: not least how to pay for a raft of uncosted policies, end rough sleeping, stem the flow of illegal immigration into the UK, tackle Britain’s spiralling welfare bill and more?
But no. It appears that Number 10 Oop North has become Number 10 Up Sticks. Since Andy Burnham is off on his holidays. Given at his coronation he proclaimed we are a nation “fed up” with a revolving door of leaders, the departure lounge of Manchester airport – or wherever – clearly didn’t factor into his noble vision.
