Dear Millers – I hope you’ve had a wonderful weekend, despite (or because of?) the scorching heat.
If your chosen device for sheltering from the sun was a copy of today’s Times, you might have noticed that page 11 was devoted to a Mill story: a syndicated version of Joshi’s weekend read about Andy Burnham. The paper asked us to republish the piece after it blew up on social media this weekend, bringing many new readers to this parish and turning Joshi’s cat (she is called Kat) into a minor celebrity thanks to her cameo.
Kat and a tweet about our piece.
It was described as “thoughtful and nuanced” (Beth Rigby, Sky News), “very very good” (Patrick Maguire, The Times) and “This is superb and everyone in Westminster should read it” (Tim Shipman, The Spectator).
The response we most approved of was from the Economist’s Anshel Pfeffer, who called it “one of the best pieces of British political journalism I’ve read in a while” and said he had signed up as a Mill member.
This morning’s Politico newsletter said it’s the piece “everyone in Westminster is reading”.
It’s the second time in a few days that a Mill story has been all over the national press. Friday’s newspapers were rife with a story that Mill subscribers have already known about since April.
The breaking news was this: that five people had been arrested in Tameside following our reporting. “The Mill, a Manchester-based publication, had investigated claims that individuals were encouraged to stand as independent candidates in the St Peter’s ward election,” went the story in the Guardian.
The Telegraph reported on its front page how Philip Wilson-Marks, the former vice-chairman of the Ashton-under-Lyne Community Labour Party, told us that he was approached twice with the fake independent tactic — “with one of these approaches taking place in Ms Rayner’s kitchen.” The story was covered by everyone from GB News to BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme.
“Apart from anything else, this must be the third or fourth significant political corruption story that The Mill have broken this year,” tweeted the Mancunian journalist Ally Fogg. “A tiny independent media outlet, working on a shoestring, putting both local and national corporate press to shame.”
And the top political commentator Peter Oborne posted: “Everybody with an interest in British politics should subscribe at once to Manchester's independent and clearly very troublesome local newspaper, The Mill. More power to its elbow!”
We wholeheartedly endorse the statement that “Everybody with an interest in British politics should subscribe at once” and we would broaden that statement to people who don’t have any interest in British politics but who:
- Want to know what’s going on in Greater Manchester;
- Are ambiently interested in Greater Manchester but are sick of clickbait headlines and AI-written slop on other sites;
- Believe that it’s valuable for the public discourse in this country to be less dominated by journalists based in one building in London;
- Want to receive our upcoming series, The Burnham Blueprint, to get the very best insights into the man who may become prime minister, from the team who has covered him for years;
- Fancy coming to our brilliant upcoming members-only events on the history, politics and culture of this city;
- Think articles in which cats are prominently mentioned are worthy of public support.
But seriously, please join up now. It only costs £8.90 per month and or £89 for the year, you will be backing a model that is doing extremely high quality work on a shoestring. You’ll get a lot out of your subscription, morally and intellectually, and next time you see our work popping up in a major publication you’ll be able to say: I know those guys! And I helped create that story.
