Can Andy Burnham take credit for Manchester’s success?
I grew up in a suburb of Stockport and when I was younger, Stockport town centre was, to put it politely, ‘angin. It could have been described using a lot of words beginning with f and s, but ‘fashionable’ and ‘sought-after’ weren’t among them. However, this is no longer true. The wider transformation of Greater Manchester in my lifetime has been massive. Stockport is now regularly described (both ironically and unironically) as ‘the new Berlin.’ I know someone not from Greater Manchester who was interested in moving to Edgeley because it had nice coffee shops. Manchester city centre, which once emptied after office hours, is now packed with flats, bars, students, cranes, hotels and people who voluntarily pay £8 for a pint.
