Patrick O’Flynn Patrick O’Flynn

Burnham’s gamble could collapse around him

(Photo by Martin Rickett - Pool/Getty Images)

If they were to give out awards for best use of an anorak to communicate stroppy defiance then Andy Burnham would be about to break the stranglehold of former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher.

In a city where it rains on more than 150 days a year, it is perhaps unsurprising that the anorak has become the garb of the everyman. And it was surely no accident that Greater Manchester’s Mayor was clad in one as he spoke out on Thursday against Whitehall’s plans to put his region into the highest tier of lockdown controls.

After successfully launching his theme on the BBC’s Question Time last week (when he told viewers ‘it does feel increasingly to people like we are being treated with contempt in the north of England’), Labour’s Mr Manchester upped the ante for the gathered TV news crews.

‘They are willing to sacrifice jobs and businesses here to try and save them elsewhere. Greater Manchester and the Liverpool city region and Lancashire are being set up as the canaries in the coal mine for an experimental regional lockdown,’ he declared, thereby squeezing a disappeared northern industrial icon into the frame for good measure.

While the terms ‘down south’ and ‘that London’ did not pass his lips, they did not need to

While the terms ‘down south’ and ‘that London’ did not pass his lips, they did not need to. Short of donning an enormous papier-mache Frank Sidebottom head for his peroration it is difficult to think what more Mr Burnham could have done to conjure up the idea of heartless southern Tories treading their fancy loafers down on northern windpipes.

In fact, Burnham concluded with a passage worthy of Peterloo, Mike Leigh’s romanticised 2018 film about the brutal putting down of a popular uprising in the middle of Manchester in 1819 (Lord Liverpool was PM back then but don’t let that bother you): 

This is an important moment.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in