Greater manchester

Wednesday

Max Jeffery

Criminal candidates, grooming gangs and petrol bombings – welcome to Oldham

Everyone who’s anyone in Oldham knows Irish Imy. Born Mohammed Imran Ali in Dublin in 1980 and raised in Werneth in south-west Oldham, Imy is the borough’s recurring bad guy. He’s done time for assault, trafficking heroin and being the getaway driver for the murderer Dale Cregan, who shot three people and blew up their bodies with grenades in 2012. Naturally, Imy now wants to be a politician. He’s standing in this year’s local elections as an independent, promising to ‘Make Werneth Great Again’. His campaign is not regarded as insane. He may win. Imy is capitalising on the sense that this Greater Manchester borough is corrupt. People in Oldham

Saturday

Katy Balls

Andy Burnham makes life more difficult for Starmer

As Keir Starmer spends the weekend working out how exactly to bounce back from disappointing results for his party in the local elections, not every Labour politician is down and out. Step forward Andy Burnham. The Greater Manchester mayor has this afternoon been re-elected with an impressive 67.3 per cent of the vote. In his victory speech on hearing the news, Burnham appeared close to tears as he thanked his family for their support and called for more devolution in England.  But it’s another part of Burnham’s speech that’s likely to set the cat among the pigeons. The former Labour MP used his speech to offer advice on devolution, not just to the Prime