Catching up with Manchester’s first openly trans councillor

‘Sometimes politics happens to you, whether you have a choice or not’

Dear readers — It’s been just over a year since Chris Northwood won her historic election and became Manchester’s first openly trans councillor. But Chris never necessarily intended to be a poster child for the Lib Dem’s LGBTQ progressivism; she just wanted to do good work on hyperlocal issues that mattered to her and her neighbours. For today’s issue, Mollie catches up with the Doncaster native about how she’s grown more comfortable with her inadvertent role representing the trans community, trying to get things done in the grind of local politics, and whether the Lib Dems can deliver on a better path for the city’s future. 

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Your Mill briefing

🌳 Some moorland in Bolton has been anointed a “habitat bank”, an area in which developers can buy biodiversity units to offset harms done by their projects. Here’s how it works: a company — in this case one called Environment Bank — partners with a landowner — say, a farmer — to create the habitat bank. The landowner leases the land to the company, who then repackages that into a collection of biodiversity units that developers can buy to offset their carbon emissions or encroachment onto other land. In Bolton, 51 acres will be “transformed into a nature restoration site” using the money made from selling the units.

👨‍🍳 Wood, the eponymous restaurant of Masterchef star Simon Wood, has closed after seven years on First Street. In a statement on social media, Wood said the closure was due to Covid rent arrears, energy costs and incoming business rate hikes. He is the second high-profile chef to shut up shop in Manchester, with celebrity chef and TV personality Simon Rimmer having closed both of his Greens restaurants in Didsbury and Sale. Rimmer also blamed rising rent and rates.

🏛️ Independent councillors in Wigan have accused the controlling Labour group of being on “the pathway to tyranny” after a motion put forward at the last council meeting that would restrict the number — and nature — of questions councillors are allowed to ask local portfolio holders. Councillors can no longer speak for the allotted five minutes they were previously allowed, and can only submit one question per meeting. Not only that, they cannot ask questions related to the function or decision-making of council officers. Leading Labour councillors say this is because independents were using the time allowed to them to “grandstand” rather than ask questions.

🚨 Some 90 weapons — including knives, hammers, knuckle dusters and one machete — were seized from Greater Manchester schools between September 2023 and July 2024. The figures were released after a Freedom of Information Request made by the Local Democracy Reporting Service. An anonymous teacher said many pupils had no intention to harm, but carried weapons out of fear for their own safety.

🪩 On Friday, the Times published a data-led article that found London venues close earlier than many other cities in the country, placing Manchester as the city with the most venues open after 2am. We shared that article in Monday’s briefing, but since then its methodology has been questioned by nightlife reporter Dan Hancox, which makes for an interesting read.

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A tastebud tour of Manchester’s history

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Thanks to today’s sponsor. If you’d like to tell over 50,000 readers in Greater Manchester about your event or product, contact daniel@millmediaco.uk. 

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Catching up with Manchester’s first openly trans councillor

By Mollie Simpson

Manchester Pride weekend. Hundreds of people are gathered in Deansgate, hungover from the night before, half-heartedly applying glitter. The sound of music blares through a speaker and then through a megaphone, the audio is distorted and strange. 

Chris Northwood, a 37-year-old software engineer and a Liberal Democrat councillor for Ancoats and Beswick, arrives at the parade to join her party colleagues. She finds them standing in the middle of the road, a vast stretch of concrete and lazily parked cars, holding signs saying the Lib Dems are “the party of Manchester’s 1st Openly Trans Cllr” emblazoned with a photo of her face.

She had given her consent for these signs, but upon seeing them in person for the first time, she feels an immediate tug of resistance at being the party’s poster girl. “I was like, oh I don’t know how I feel about that,” she tells me afterwards. “I was like, I want to celebrate that, but I also don’t feel like I’ve done enough to earn that.”

One month later I’ve come to meet Chris in Café Cotton in the Hallé St Peter’s in Ancoats. She’s stirring a glass of coke with a straw when, mid-conversation, we’re interrupted by a man on the table next to us. “Oh Chris, hi, how are you?” he says warmly. She waves to indicate she’s in the middle of something and he nods. Outside, it’s a cold and sunny autumn day; the sky is a soft blue. Chris, who works four days a week as a senior software developer, is dedicating today to her councillor duties, navigating “complex casework” and meeting with her council colleagues.

Photo courtesy of Chris Northwood.

In 2021, there was only one Liberal Democrat in the Town Hall, compared to 94 Labour councillors. Now, there are four, compared to 87 Labour councillors. When a by-election was called in February 2022, Lib Dem candidate Alan Good swept to a decisive victory, making the Lib Dems the only party to beat Labour in a by-election that year. Writing in Manchester Confidential, the journalist Lucy Tomlinson said that it was “potentially just the start of a loosening of the iron grip Labour has on the city-centre wards”. One year later, Chris Northwood won the election with the biggest opposition majority of any seat in Manchester, with 1,543 votes.

Her win was an extraordinary achievement, not least because she became Manchester’s first openly trans councillor. She sees her win not only as an example of the importance of campaigning on hyperlocal issues like green space, air quality and potholes, but also an example of how effective the Lib Dem’s primary strategy — increasing their share of local councillors and fielding activists on local campaigns to increase national support — really is. (In 2024, the Lib Dems added 104 new councillors across the country, and gained control of two councils. At the Reform UK party conference last month, the deputy leader Richard Tice said “We’ve got to learn from the wonderful Lib Dems”, because “the truth is, they’re the best at ground campaigning.”) Chris says their success in Ancoats and Beswick is also a sign that Labour wards shouldn’t become complacent, or believe that Labour councillors are “entitled to the vote”.

Chris says she’s proud of her track record, despite the party’s failures, at least so far, to deliver on all it’s promised.