With Rayner gone, Burnham is on manoeuvres

Dear readers — good afternoon and welcome back to this ever-so-slightly late Monday briefing. Do forgive us, we’ve spent the morning playing office Tetris with the desks here at Mill HQ, clearing space for our soon-to-be-arriving new team member. If you missed it, on Sunday we sent out a newsletter announcing that we are, once again, hiring. You can see the full details for that role here (it’s for a staff writer), and please do send the link in the direction of anyone you know who might be interested.

As well as the news that we’re hiring, we’ve also hired! We’re delighted to announce that Cameron Barr — the former managing editor of the Washington Post — has joined as our first ever investigations editor. At the Washington Post Cameron oversaw teams that won 13 Pulitzer Prizes, and you can read a bit more about what he has to say on the challenge of bringing back rigorous investigative journalism at a local level in the UK here. 

SPONSORED

Salford Youth Zone opens with support from Manchester Building Society

This summer, the new Salford Youth Zone opened its doors. The SYZ will support thousands of local children and teenagers, with state of the art facilities for sports, creative arts, and inclusive sessions for young people with additional needs. Dedicated youth workers are on site to support the children and help them to flourish whatever their background circumstances. 

The Manchester Building Society has become a patron to support the launch, donating £100,000 as part of its commitment to Greater Manchester's local communities as it opens this year.

To find out more about the Youth Zone, click below.

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This post was sponsored by Manchester Building Society

Catch up

If you missed any of The Mill’s excellent three stories last week, fear not, there’s still time to repent. Pour yourself a coffee, carve out a half hour and dive in…

• Wednesday’s read, described with remarkable accuracy as “another excellent Mill article” by one reader, came from David Rudlin and was about the theories of the superstar urbanist Richard Florda. Florida had been described as the ultimate champion of gentrification when his theory of the ‘Creative Class’ went mainstream in the early 2000s, and foresaw the Manchester economic boom of the past 20 years, but more recently he’s been doing some reconsidering.
• On Friday Jack addressed a question that isn’t likely to go away any time soon: when will Andy Burnham make his long-suspected return to Westminster? With the government in chaos following Angela Rayner’s resignation, Burnham is seen as the most obvious potential successor to Sir Keir Starmer. But could his departure from the north open the door to Reform in Manchester?
• Then at the weekend Ophira spoke to the alumni of Manchester Grammar School about the school’s changing place in Mancunian society. Is the 500-year old institution a juggernaut breaking through the southern-dominance of the elite universities and breeding the next generation of Manchester’s elite, or is it just another private school? 

🌦️ This week’s weather

Tuesday 🌤️ Mostly dry with warm spells of sunshine. Breezy. 20°C.

Wednesday 🌦️ Cooler with outbreaks of rain, especially during the afternoon. 17°C.

Thursday 🌦️ Windy with bright spells and blustery showers. 17°C.

Friday 🌦️ Windy and showery with fleeting sunny spells. 16°C.

Weekend 🌦️ Remaining cool and unsettled with showers and longer periods of rain. Windy on Sunday ahead of a windy start next week.

We get our weekly forecast from Manchester Weather.

Your briefing

🌹 As the government went about restructuring itself over the weekend — following the resignation of deputy leader and Greater Manchester MP Angela Rayner — new factions emerged in the Labour Party. One, which launched officially today, is called Mainstream, and has the backing of Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham. “Mainstream speaks to the change that’s needed, a more inclusive, less factional way of running the party.” Burnham told the Guardian. “My head hurts,” one source texts in. “They formed a faction to end factions?” The group’s mission statement says its main aim is to save the Labour Party “its clear drift to the right and the unintended paving of the way to a Reform government”, and argues that “the top of the Labour Party is now wildly out of step with the majority in the Labour Party”. Insiders tell The Mill the group is a “strange collection” of characters. “You wouldn’t put those people together, someone has corralled them,” one said. The group has coalesced just as a deputy leadership contest has begun in earnest. On Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Burnham said a new deputy leader should be from the north, and floated MP for Manchester Central Lucy Powell, and Louise Haigh, MP for Sheffield Heeley and former secretary for transport. Last week, a few hours before Rayner’s resignation, we published a piece looking at how Burnham could make his way back to Westminster, and possibly take a shot at the leadership. With the Labour Party now in flux, that could be becoming more likely. 

🚕 And more Burnham news. Last Thursday, the mayor sat down with the Secretary of State for Transport to ask the government to amend the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill so Wolverhampton Council will no longer be able to “dominate” taxi licensing. It comes after Burnham led calls for taxi licensing powers to be handed to combined authorities in April, describing a “broken” licensing system. According to GMCA figures, 49% of taxis operating in Greater Manchester were licensed by councils outside of the city, and more than 11% of England’s private hire vehicles were licensed by just one local authority: Wolverhampton. Burnham argued that out-of-town licensing could impact public safety, given local licensing authorities can’t suspend or revoke a drivers’ license if there are complaints about driver behaviour.

🏛️ Hopwood Depree, the bleach-blonde Hollywood producer who believes he has an ancestral claim to Hopwood Hall, is preparing to go to battle with Rochdale Council. The Rochdale Times reports that Depree has filed papers with the High Court intending to challenge the council’s decision not to sell the building to him. In 2017, Depree signed a legally binding option agreement with the council which would allow him to buy the hall within a mandated timeframe – in this case, five years – on the condition that Depree come up with a viable plan or the future of the hall, but the agreement was torn up due to conflicting visions over its future (Mills passim).

Quick hits

👮 Greater Manchester Police made six arrests at a protest outside an asylum hotel on Wilmslow Road yesterday, with two arrests made in suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences.

🚌 2,000 bus drivers working for various operators under the Bee Network have voted to strike after rejecting pay offers ranging between 3.5 and 5%. Unite members will take action on the weekend of 19-22 September.

🚬 And spare a thought for retired teacher Steve Jones, who was fined £433 by Manchester city council recently for dropping a cigarette butt, despite the fact he was 200 miles away at the time and doesn’t smoke. The council said they are trying to have the conviction set aside and have apologised “unreservedly” — The Guardian has the story. 

🦋 The Lancashire Wildlife Trust have launched an appeal to revive the large heath butterfly after the loss of their habitats around Greater Manchester. They want to raise £20,000.

Home of the week

This gorgeous house in Worsley’s got a Grade II* listing, for better or for worse — and can be yours for £475,000.

Our favourite reads

Norman Foster: ‘My best building is not a building’ — The Times 

Norman Foster — the world-famous architect, born in Stockport — speaks to The Times about his greatest works and the ideas he never got to realise, “all architects have drawers full of those.” Born in Reddish, Foster worked as an ice cream man, bouncer and baker to support his architectural studies at the University of Manchester, before getting a scholarship to Yale. He went on to redesign Trafalgar Square, the Reichstag Building in Berlin, and build Apple’s headquarters in California. This ranging interview cuts between Foster’s rise as the UK’s most well-known architect and his thoughts on the country’s dearth of affordable housing. ‘And here is where the godfather of steel-and-glass starchitecture astonishes,’ writes Katrina Boroughs. ‘He sings the praises of the Victorian terraced house.’

Immersive art is much more than a digital light show — The Financial Times 

We enjoyed this essay by Julia Fawcett — the chief executive of The Lowry — last month, on the virtues of the immersive art show. Many have passed through Greater Manchester in recent years (from Van Gogh to David Hockney) and Fawcett concentrates on her own institution’s attempts to make these experiences special. Often criticised as derivative and banal, Fawcett sees another side of these exhibits: ‘Families discover art together, teenagers engage with cultural heritage for the first time and neurodivergent visitors find new meaning in what they experience: this isn’t dilution — it’s expansion of what art can be.’ 

Our to do list

Tuesday

✏️ Manchester photographer turned urban artist Len Grant is releasing a brand-new Chorlton Sketchbook. He’ll be giving a talk at Chorlton Library tomorrow to celebrate.

🍤 And a new tapas bar just opened in the Northern Quarter. It’s £3.50 per dish all day on Tuesdays at Maricarmen.

Wednesday

📚 Drop in to the John Rylands Library for their free Rare Reads event, to encounter some of their most famous objects and archives. No booking required.

🎧 This one looks great: Esea Contemporary are hosting a listening party exploring the roots and flows of Chinese hip-hop. The event will be led by writer and curator Alvin Li.

Thursday

🌅 It’s a workshop-heavy Thursday. Scottish storytelling group Blether are putting on a collograph printing workshop at the Carlton Club.

💡And over at The Art of Tea cafe and bookshop in Didsbury you can learn to make your very own sustainable lampshade.

Got a To-Do that you’d like us to list? Tell us about it here.