Manchester

Wednesday

Dot Wordsworth

The muddle over vanishingly unlikely

From our UK edition

When my husband asked me whether I knew any mathematics at all, I replied by telling him that I had been a properly brought-up girl. The cause of our little wrangle was the phrase vanishingly unlikely. A newspaper article on scams pointed out that ‘only a tiny minority of oil workers are women, meaning it is vanishingly unlikely to meet a real one online’. Another said that ‘Britain is vanishingly unlikely to meet Nato’s target of spending 5 per cent of GDP on national security by 2035.’ In both those examples, vanishingly is used in the sense ‘infinitesimally’. But the meaning properly wanted here is ‘hugely’ or ‘almost infinitely’ unlikely. It is the likelihood that is vanishingly small. The unlikelihood is very great.

Wednesday

Dot Wordsworth

The true origins of Manchesterism

From our UK edition

‘If I hear anyone say Manchesterism again, I will…’ said my husband, leaving his thought unfinished, and slipping, rather easily, into the role of Lear in his impotence. I had no intention of explaining to him what Andy Burnham means by Manchesterism. No one knows – perhaps not even he. But the word has been around since 1883, when it was reputed to be a system that ‘enriched the few at the expense of the many’. That had been the charge against its inventors, Richard Cobden and John Bright, whom Disraeli accused in 1846 of being ‘Gentlemen of the Manchester School, who believe they may fight hostile tariffs with free imports’.

Tali Fraser

The real story of Manchesterism isn’t the one Andy Burnham is telling

From our UK edition

‘Manchesterism,’ Andy Burnham declared in his Makerfield by-election campaign video, ‘is the end of neoliberalism.’ The path to power, he believes, lies in the Mancunian Way. Not the ring road that sits atop Manchester’s actual Downing Street, but his record as mayor of Britain’s ‘second city’ – and the idea that it proves his philosophy of unlocking growth and productivity for the whole country. Yet the Mancunian Way is littered with potholes. Manchesterism is not new. It did not begin with Burnham, nor with any Labour figure in Manchester. The name is borrowed – stolen, really – from the free-trade Manchester Liberalism of Richard Cobden and John Bright, who fought price-fixing, tariffs and protectionism in the 19th century.

Saturday

Tim Shipman

Is Andy Burnham up to the job of prime minister?

When the Labour party football team played a group of journalists at Loftus Road two years ago the hacks won 4-1. The politicians’ solitary goal came from a late penalty. When the referee pointed to the spot, the center-forward stepped up, elbowing well-known politicians such as Ed Balls, David Miliband and Sadiq Khan out of the way in his bid for glory. There was a notable absence that day. “Keir [Starmer] had been due to play, but he didn’t turn up,” a witness recalls. “If he had been there, he’d probably have grabbed the ball and there might have been a tussle.” Instead, Andy Burnham said: “This is mine,” and calmly slotted it into the corner. “It was a perfect penalty,” says the witness.

Andy Burnham

Wednesday

Matthew Parris

Pity Andy Burnham

From our UK edition

There is something infinitely melancholy in hearing what political ambition does to perfectly nice people. I awoke on Monday to hear Danny Kruger (an MP, formerly Conservative, now defected to Reform) defending his party’s candidate in the Makerfield by-election, one of whose past social media posts was simply too disgusting for me to repeat here. True, Mr Kruger was not defending the post itself, but the candidate’s right to a ‘private’ (protested Kruger) history of such social media comments. Well, maybe. But I seem to remember Kruger’s past speeches have been especially admired for their high moral tone – he is a strong Christian – and so his being forced to defend a candidate’s right to a history of filthy misogyny in a public forum will have hurt him.

Tuesday

Viv Groskop

Caroline Aherne’s comedic genius is much missed

From our UK edition

Who do we have on television now, or even on social media, who can unmask pomposity and self-obsession quite like Caroline Aherne did in the guise of Mrs Merton? What sitcom since 2010 is as original – and as British – as The Royle Family, always near the top of any best British sitcom list? This July marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Aherne. Given the popularity of The Mrs Merton Show, The Royle Family, which ran for 15 years, and her characters on The Fast Show (not least Poula Fisch, the weather girl who can only announce one type of weather), it’s perhaps odd that this is the first ever biography. It quickly becomes evident why. Aherne is not the easiest subject: having been hounded by the press, she was not fond of giving interviews.

Wednesday

Martin Vander Weyer

Manchester won’t raise a statue to Andy Burnham

From our UK edition

Already heard enough of ‘Is Manchesterism a thing and did Andy Burnham invent it?’ I’m afraid you’ll hear a great deal more between now and the Makerfield by-election – and long afterwards if Burnham wins the seat and the subsequent Labour leadership contest. So here’s a reminder that he defined Manchesterism in an interview last year as ‘consensual, business-friendly socialism that seeks to retake public control of all essential services’ – though in nine years as Greater Manchester’s mayor he achieved that latter objective only to the extent of imposing integrated fares and timetables on privately run buses. My own definition of Manchesterism, in response to his, was ‘manoeuvring shamelessly for power on the strength of other people’s achievements’.

Wednesday

Max Jeffery and Michael Gove

‘Here’s a novel concept – arrest bad people’: how Sir Stephen Watson turned around Greater Manchester Police

From our UK edition

Sir Stephen Watson, Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police (GMP), is Warrington-born, Rhodesia-raised. His father was an engineer in the Royal Navy and his work took the family to South Africa, South West Africa and then, when Sir Stephen was still a schoolboy, the breadbasket. The Watson family stayed in Rhodesia until Robert Mugabe became prime minister in 1980 and threw them out. ‘I saw the collapse of policing,’ Sir Stephen says. ‘I saw the collapse of the rule of law. I saw the collapse of health systems, of education systems, of legal systems.’ He also saw what Britain could lose. ‘I think there is a complacency in the UK. We take things for granted. I like to quote Kipling on this: “What should they know of England who only England know?

Monday

Julie Burchill

Robert De Niro has a serious case of Trump envy

The past few weeks has seen the pleasing spectacle of beautiful female film stars (Sydney Sweeney, Keira Knightley – even the previous Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer Jennifer Lawrence, who once said that an orange victory would be ‘the end of the world’) refusing to toe the accepted Hollywood line on politics, be it by not kowtowing to trans activists or not accepting that everything is racist. Lawrence actually said: ‘Election after election, celebrities do not make a difference whatsoever on who people vote for’ – or as I wrote here in the spring: ‘How dim would a political party need to be to understand that not only do celeb endorsements not work, but have an actual repelling effect?

Thursday

Martin Vander Weyer

Don’t surrender to soulless self-checkouts

From our UK edition

A friend runs a small factory employing 60 skilled workers. He exports industrial components worldwide, competing with Europe for quality and China for price: a model enterprise for the productive economy we wish we had more of. Earlier this year, his top concerns were the hike in employers’ national insurance (costing the equivalent of several new apprentices) and the advent of Donald Trump’s tariffs. Since then, he’s been hit by a cyber-attack – and his story, a miniature of Jaguar Land Rover’s, is a parable for business everywhere. Like most companies today, this one is paperless: IT-dependent in everything from product design to accounting and HR. It also happens to hold ample cash, which hackers could have spotted from Companies House filings.

Friday

John Connolly

John Connolly, Gavin Mortimer, Dorian Lynskey, Steve Morris and Lloyd Evans

From our UK edition

26 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: John Connolly argues that Labour should look to Andy Burnham for inspiration (1:51); Gavin Mortimer asks if Britain is ready for France’s most controversial novel – Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints (4:55); Dorian Lynskey looks at the race to build the first nuclear weapons, as he reviews Frank Close’s Destroyer of Worlds (11:23); Steve Morris provides his notes on postcards (16:44); and, Lloyd Evans reflects on British and Irish history as he travels around Dublin (20:44).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Tuesday

Lara Prendergast

With Mary-Ellen McTague

From our UK edition

25 min listen

Mary-Ellen McTague is a chef based in Manchester. She is the culinary driving force behind Aunbury, 4244, the Creameries and her newest venture, Pip at the Treehouse Hotel. Mary-Ellen is also the co-founder of Eat Well MCR, which has delivered almost 100,000 meals across Greater Manchester since 2020 to those sidelined by poverty. On the podcast, she tells Liv and Lara why, as a child, she would only eat orange cheese, why Lancashire hotpot is so nostalgic, her Eureka moment when she decided to become a chef – and where you should eat in Manchester.

Tuesday

Ian Sansom

The plain-speaking bloke from Warrington who painted only for himself

From our UK edition

We don’t all get to achieve what we could have achieved in life. And yes, I know, so what? Tough luck. Cry me a river, build me a bridge and get over it. But, like it or not, some people really do have the odds stacked more heavily against them than others and yet somehow carry on regardless. In The Secret Painter, the scriptwriter Joe Tucker (Parents, Big Bad World) tells the true story of his Uncle Eric, born in 1932 – an ordinary man who never gave up. Let’s be honest, The Secret Painter could have been absolutely terrible.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Searching for the energy at the New Hampshire primary

Manchester, New Hampshire “OK, who here is not a voter in New Hampshire?” asked Marianne Williamson as she took the microphone. Almost everyone in the small, quarter-full auditorium at Manchester Community College raised a hand. “Well, that’s depressing,” said Marianne. Williamson carries herself with a certain grandiosity. She has that quasi-aristocratic bearing that comes from decades of being attractive, famous, well-off and radical. In 2024, she’s casting herself as the presidential candidate for despairing Bernie Sanders supporters. As she did in 2020, she presents her agenda as the spiritual alternative to politics as normal. “Not every rich person in America is a greedy bastard,” she says. “Not every poor person is a noble and pure soul.

New Hampshire

Friday

Matt McDonald

Vivek Ramaswamy’s ‘anti-woke’ campaign caper

New Hampshire Vivek Ramaswamy accepts it: running for president is “a weird thing to do as a thirty-seven-year-old.” The biotech multimillionaire and anti-woke capitalism crusader is a surprise entry into the 2024 Republican primary after announcing on Tucker Carlson’s show on Tuesday. He went straight from Carlson’s Florida studio to early-voting New Hampshire. I arrived in the snow-dusted city of Rochester at 9 a.m. on Wednesday to watch him kick off his first full day of campaigning — and to work out what the author of Woke, Inc. hoped to bring to the race. Around thirty or so were gathered in Potter’s House bakery watching Vivek gear up for his third Fox hit in fourteen hours.

vivek ramaswamy

Saturday

Matt McDonald

Nikki Haley’s long shot

Manchester, New Hampshire Sorry fellas: GOP girlboss Nikki Haley is going to be the next president. At least according to former New Hampshire candidate for Senate Don Bolduc, who knows a thing or two about calling elections. Bolduc introduced Haley at two New Hampshire town halls in the week she entered the 2024 Republican primary. The second was held Friday at Saint Anselm College in Goffstown, a regular stop for candidates visiting the early primary state. The packed room was treated to a soundtrack of late-boomer classics from Blondie, Tom Petty and the Detroit Spinners. On her way in, Haley stopped by the overspill area in the foyer to thank the surplus guests for coming. "Next time we'll have a bigger room," the candidate promised.

nikki haley

Monday

Matt McDonald

Slowly roasting in heatwave Britain

Manchester, England Making plans for a European city break this summer? Seeking somewhere with centuries of history and culture, fine wine and, above all, sweltering temperatures? There’ll always be Rome, Barcelona, Athens — but chances are you haven’t considered Manchester, the northern English industrial powerhouse that inspired Karl Marx to write The Communist Manifesto and gave the world the Smiths, Joy Division and Oasis (you know, the ones who wrote “Wonderwall”).

heatwave britain

Saturday

Dan Hitchens

Will Alta Fixsler be allowed to die at home?

From our UK edition

If your severely disabled two-year-old daughter is dying, should you be allowed to take her home for her final hours? It sounds like the answer should be a simple ‘yes’. But in the law surrounding parents, children and healthcare, nothing is that simple. Alta Fixsler’s parents have been repeatedly thwarted in their efforts – as they see it – to do their best for their daughter. First, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust sought to withdraw life-saving treatment for Alta. A judge subsequently agreed that it was in Alta's 'best interests for the treatment that is currently sustaining her precious life...to be withdrawn'. This was in spite of her parents seeking to take her to Israel for treatment.

Sunday

Duncan Gardham

Why were the emergency services so slow responding to the Manchester bombing?

From our UK edition

Claire Booth was put in the impossible position of having to decide whether to care for her sister or her daughter after the Manchester Arena attack. She understandably chose to look after her 12-year-old daughter, Hollie, but the decision still haunts her. More than anything, she wishes that emergency help had arrived quickly, in whatever form, and that the three of them had been taken to hospital for proper care. Kelly Brewster, her bubbly, music-loving sister did not survive the bombing. The speed of the emergency response may not have made a difference to Kelly but it may be that two others among the 22 victims could have been saved – eight-year-old Saffie-Rose Roussos and 28-year-old John Atkinson.

Friday

Steerpike

The Marcus Rashford mural – an anatomy of a moral panic

From our UK edition

Late on Sunday night, less than an hour after England lost on penalties to Italy in the European championship final, a mural of the United striker Marcus Rashford was defaced in his hometown of Withington in south Manchester.  Shortly afterwards the defaced part of the mural was hidden by black bin-liners and an online campaign was launched by the artist to repair the mural. Mr S believes the first report from the Manchester Evening News described the vandalism as ‘indecipherable lettering, daubed in blue paint on Sunday night, [which] can barely be seen over the powerful black and white image.’ On Monday morning, Greater Manchester Police released a statement which said they had responded to ‘reports’ of racially aggravated damage to the mural.