Northerners love to chat, especially with complete strangers. Often it takes little more than a tin of tomatoes at a supermarket checkout to spark a full-throated conversation. It’s what broadly sets us apart from the southern playbook of few words and definitely no eye contact.
What the Manc-splainers fail to grasp is that residents of Manchester, Makerfield and everywhere in between have a front-row view of reality, and can see beyond the poster-boy politics of the so-called King of the North.
Yet when it comes to the impending Makerfield by-election, there has clearly been a cultural shift. Andy Burnham’s arms-length supporters 200 miles away have suddenly become the ones keen on conversation. More specifically, despite not living in the area, they are constantly talking about why the current mayor of Manchester is a political messiah.
It matters not whether they’d even heard of the Makerfield constituency before the exiting MP Josh Simons stepped down to trigger the contest. From Westminster to Wigan, assorted Labour supporting politicians, commentators and activists enthusiastically insist, even to local residents, just how transformative Burnham would be for the nation. After all, haven’t we seen what he has done for Manchester?
It’s what – trademark pending – I term Manc-splaining: the irritating habit of outsiders explaining to the locals of Greater Manchester why the man who would be MP for Makerfield, and ergo the next prime minister, is supposedly the only person capable of saving the country.
The phrase is deliberate. Not least because ‘Manc’ is often deployed as lazy shorthand by outsiders to describe those of us who actually live here – a term many real Mancunians instinctively dislike.
What the Manc-splainers fail to grasp is that residents of Manchester, Makerfield and everywhere in between have a front-row view of reality, and can see beyond the poster-boy politics of the so-called King of the North.
We have no truck with elegant political strategy. Regarding Burnham instead as a bloodless strategist who is using the people of the north to supplant an already seated Labour MP in pursuit of his own Westminster ambitions.
That’s not to say we don’t recognise his appeal. Having met him myself, it’s easy to see how the slick blend of congenial smiles and carefully calibrated glottal-stop authenticity might land in terms of approval ratings.
But we don’t buy into the image of a plain-speaking northern bloke who simply gets things done. We’re close enough to examine the pores in the skin of that carefully constructed profile.
Which is why being endlessly told by people who neither live in his prospective constituency nor experience the realities of his mayoralty how fortunate we are to have him is not only tedious, ill-informed and irritating. It’s also, as we say round here, bang out of order.
Take the way Londoners trumpet Burnham’s Bee Network as overwhelming proof of his statesmanlike competence.
Sure, they may have a point about Manchester’s bright yellow integrated fleet of buses, trams, and cycle hire as well as the capped fares (even if they couldn’t point out Prestwich or Partington on a map).
But if you lived here, you would also know that a walk through Manchester city centre means passing doorways where homeless people huddle beneath sleeping bags. It is a stark illustration of how Burnham’s mayoralty has struggled to get a grip on affordable and social housing while simultaneously championing vast property developments.
Manchester may well be one of the fastest-growing cities in Britain. But when luxury high-rises tower above rough sleepers it paints a rather different picture from the branding exercise Burnham’s champions would have us believe.
And then there are the failures local people have not forgotten. We remember the £100 million squandered on a now-abandoned Clean Air Zone scheme which many of us living here recognised from the outset as fundamentally unworkable.
We remember Burnham’s faltering grasp of the Rochdale grooming scandal.
We also remember that, as Police and Crime Commissioner he presided over a period in which Greater Manchester Police was placed into special measures after years of serious failings.
But beyond the mismatch between long distance political messaging and street-level reality, there is something even more annoying about Manc-splaining.
It is bizarrely patronising. Treating Mancunians not as a complex, mixed population capable of forming our own opinions. But as pathetic subjects who should be grateful to live in the Kingdom of Burnham and the largesse supposedly bestowed upon us.
It’s important to stress, as one born in Manchester and who has lived here all my life, there is a tremendous amount to love about the city
Not least the people, many of whom genuinely do live up to every cliché about northern grit, resilience and dry humour. As well as our willingness to welcome strangers.
But please spare us the absurdly simplistic national conversation by those who presume the people here in the North are incapable of seeing the value of our own mayor without guidance from some government lackey from Hackney banging on about buses, or a podcast host in Tower Hamlets declaring that Burnham’s mayoralty is the blueprint for Britain.
Manchester is not a photo opportunity for a canny, wannabe prime minister and his evangelical, distant and dislocated fans
The picture here is not unremittingly rosy. Or even all yellow. If Andy Burnham’s supporters think otherwise then perhaps it’s time to talk to us – not at us.
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