Dear readers — at the People’s History Museum this morning, but a few hundred metres from where we bring you this newsletter, the plan for the future of Britain is being announced. Or at least some of it. Joshi was there to watch Burnham as he talked devolution, an expansion of 10 Downing Street to Manchester and a major council house building scheme (we also got surreptitious snaps of Sacha Lord, who seems closer and closer to the seat of power by the day).
We’ve got the full lowdown on Burnham’s plan for Britain in this newsletter.
But the first item is less to do with Burnham and more to do with the gaping hole he’s left behind.
Two weeks ago The Mill released our mayoral candidate predictions, based entirely on spurious gossip and hearsay. Today we hold ourselves – and our sources, trustworthy or otherwise – to account.
Ai Weiwei takes over Aviva Studios
Ai Weiwei presents his largest exhibition yet at Aviva Studios this summer. Button up! brings major art works and a 24-hour-performance piece together to explore the legacy of British imperialism, Chinese and British relations and the rise of globalisation.
In the performance piece, Sewing A Button, Weiwei revisits his time imprisoned in secret detention in China. Hosted in a replica of the cell he was detained in for 81 days, the 24-hour live performance invites audiences to witness a day of his life in detention across the 3rd and 4th July.
From the 2nd July to 6th September, Weiwei takes over the vast warehouse with his major artworks, including two new pieces created especially for the space. Artworks include a mural made of over a million toy bricks, flags made of half a million buttons each and a 47m long inflatable migrant boat.
There's also a range of activities to honour Weiwei’s work this summer at Aviva Studios — learn more below.
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Labour
Our top guess: Bev Craig
Chosen: Bev Craig
It was always going to be Bev Craig for Labour, the leader of Manchester City Council. Craig is well respected among Manchester’s power brokers, and is a fairly conventional candidate (unlike say, rumours of Gary Neville taking it on as his 150th job). Her status as a Labour establishment figure could count against her, certainly, but given the present Burnham-led surge in optimism for Labour she’s seen as the favourite to win according to the most recent polls.
Reform
Our top guess: Dan Barker
Our second guess: Sian Astley
Chosen: Sian Astley
“Sian Astley is clearly a woman in charge,” began an MEN profile of Reform’s mayoral candidate in 2013. “Without such an assured sense of her own ability, it would never have been possible to build a £2.5m property book from a pound coin she found in her back pocket.” When we reported on the potential mayoral picks a few weeks back, we identified her as one of two major Reform candidates in GM alongside Dan Barker. We now know Astley got the nod — as it was announced this morning. She lives in Fallowfield according to the party, runs a design and property business and is often on the TV talking about landlord-related issues. On the Matt Goodwin to Rob Kenyon scale of ‘minor celebrity’ to ‘local person done good’, she’s probably smack in the middle.
Green Party
Our top guess: Laurence Blackwell-Jones
Our second guess: Geraldine Coggins
Chosen: Geraldine Coggins
Coggins is a candidate who needs no introduction in this newsletter, as we’ve already profiled her. Author of the first ever book-length study on Metaphysical Nihilism, she successfully faced down a vote of no confidence earlier this year — and now has her eyes on Manchester’s biggest prize. But, as we reported in said profile, Green Party factionalism might get the better of her.
Restore Britain
Our top guess (sort of): Marlon Scott West
Chosen: Marlon Scott West
Technically, on that fateful Monday, we’d heard no rumours on who the candidate was for Restore, only that he would “set a cat among the pigeons”. However we redeemed ourselves when, a few days later, we exclusively revealed it would be Marlon Scott West, a high profile campaigner against grooming gangs and child sexual exploitation. Ophira spent yesterday morning eating bacon butties with West in a cafe in Oldham, so we’ll be bringing you a profile on him shortly, but this we can tell you now: if by pigeons they meant politicians (and if by cat they meant an NHS mental health nurse) then a cat among the pigeons he will certainly be.
Liberal Democrats
Our top guess: Richard Kilpatrick
Winner: Richard Kilpatrick
When we did our predictions we were bluntly informed that “nobody wants” to be the Lib Dem candidate for the role. Bad news then for former teacher Richard Kilpatrick, a councillor in Didsbury since 2018. Social care is of particular importance to Kilpatrick, who has long-since campaigned on the issue and had been a carer for his own mum in the past, who had Alzheimer’s.
Conservatives
Our top guess: Stephen Woods
Chosen: Phil Eckersley
Seems we got this one wrong! So credit to the Tories for being the most leak-proof of all the Manchester parties. Phil Eckersley of the Bowdon ward on Trafford council, a businessman who founded a care home in Wigan which now employs more than 10 people, is the man we were after. He says he’d like the mayoral post to be less city centre-centric (he didn’t phrase it in this clumsy way) if he was elected.
The capital of the rest of everything
Andy Burnham says he will breathe new life into the British economy from a new "Number 10 North" — as he announced just now in a speech at the People's History Museum. We were in the room for his first major speech since becoming MP for Makerfield, in which he promised the biggest programme of council house building since the Second World War and a massive transfer of powers from Whitehall. Burnham said he was going to change the adversarial political culture in Westminster to bring it in line with the more collegiate politics of Greater Manchester, and reform the whipping system in parliament. It was an optimistic, forward-looking speech, given in what he called his "Manchester clothes": a black t-shirt under his dark jacket. Some of the lobby hacks who had traipsed up from London for the speech weren't delighted by his decision not to take questions at the end. For us it was a 10-minute walk, so we'll let him off this time.
If there’s one thing this speech means for The Mill, it’s that we owe Andy Spinoza an apology. Last April we mocked Spinoza for dubbing Manchester the “Capital of the Rest of Everything” in an interview with the BBC, forcing him to explain himself in the comments. Well, now Spinoza has been in touch to quite rightly say I told you so, and inform us that he also does World Cup Predictions. We await them in the comment section.
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The Andy Steve knows
Heatwaves come and heatwaves go but friendships are forever. At least that’s how we imagine Liverpool’s metro mayor Steve Rotheram would have opened this section.
Just last Saturday our two-timing editor Jack Walton wrote a piece for our Liverpudlian sister paper The Post about Rotheram’s longstanding status as, in his own words, Andy Burnham’s “bezzie mate”. You can imagine our surprise when, the following day, Rotheram himself penned an article on the same subject for the New Statesman, titled The Andy I Know. “The great Jurgen Klopp described himself as the ‘normal one’, and Andy is normal too,” it goes.
Then, third in the string of events, we spotted the man himself chatting to our bezzie mate Sacha Lord before Burnham’s speech at the People’s History Museum this very morning.
Home of the week
The finest floors in Levenshulme can be yours for £375,000.
This week’s weather
This from Martin Miles: “Respite from the heat this week, although decent enough and still pleasantly warm.”
Tuesday 🌦️ Dry during the morning and early afternoon. Turning wet later with heavy showers and a risk of thunderstorms. Max 21°c.
Wednesday 🌥️ Mostly cloudy with isolated showers and light winds. Feeling pleasant. Max 21°c.
Thursday 🌦️ Breezy with sunny spells and a few showers. Feeling fresher. Max 19°c.
Friday 🌤️ Mostly dry with light winds and intermittent sunshine. Warmer. Max 22°c.
Weekend 🌥️ Warmer but quite cloudy and breezy at first as high pressure builds. Warmest on Sunday and then very warm next week.
What our writers are up to this week
📚 Jack Walton is off to a talk! Dave Eggers, who has published his first novel in 20 years (named Contrapposto) will be in conversation with the good people from the Nerve at the Anthony Burgess Foundation on Thursday. As with the Nerve’s last Manchester event, Millers can get discounted tickets to the talk if they follow this link and then put in the code: MILLERSHAVENERVE. See you there.
📽️ And extraordinarily devoted Millers might remember that Ophira accidentally spent a huge portion of her time off last year in Tanygrisiau, a tiny slate mining town in North West Wales. Well, she’s now delighted to discover that a film has been made about the town (sort of). Effi o Blaenau is a film about “a young woman from Blaenau Ffestiniog, a town where the pubs are closed, the jobs have vanished”. Tanygrisiau is an even smaller town within Ffestiniog, which looks to Blaenau as its comparatively bustling neighbour. The film is showing at HOME until Thursday, at somewhat unusual hours.
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