On Wednesday, in Newton Heath, Labour’s Andy Burnham launched his manifesto to be the first elected mayor of Greater Manchester. Obviously, nothing can be taken for granted in politics these days – but nonetheless, Manchester is a Labour city, and the bookies currently have him at 1/6. Andy Burnham seems highly likely to be the first mayor of England’s second city.
So – what does he actually want to do with the place? He was kind enough to speak with me for a few minutes after the manifesto launch to tell me, and by some miracle the tape of that conversation is pretty much of broadcastable standard. And so, you can hear it on this week’s episode.
I’m painfully aware that we’ve not always been as kind about Burnham as we could have been on this podcast, of course. So to balance things out a bit, and make sure we’re not being too unfair, we invited our colleague Patrick Maguire – another Sefton-lad, and a self-described Burnhamite – to join us this week and to make the case for Burnham. (You can follow Patrick on Twitter here.)
Some useful links: Stephanie mentions a review she once wrote of a John Cooper Clarke show; that’s here. Here’s my New Statesman piece explaining the origins of my cynicism about Andy Burnham. And here’s Andy Burnham himself, on his manifesto.
The episode itself is below. You can subscribe to the podcast on Acast, iTunes, or RSS. Enjoy.
Jonn Elledge is the editor of CityMetric. He is on Twitter as @jonnelledge and also has a Facebook page now for some reason.
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