The drinkers outside the Slug and Lettuce on Manchester’s Albert Square were enjoying a light sprinkle of a rare luxury: rain. Four bald men with pints relished the few droplets that could be squeezed from the muggy summer sky. No one took much notice of the two armed policemen guarding the entrance to the offices above the square, which contain the (temporary) new offices of the new Prime Minister (who is also temporary, but hopefully less temporary than the last one). For one day a week, Burnham plans to run the country from No 10 North, one floor of a generic 1980s office building in the shadow of the city’s magnificent town hall. Around the corner, in a Quaker meeting house, the race for his replacement as mayor of Greater Manchester is under way.
The first candidate to arrive on stage at the Friends’ Meeting House was Geraldine Coggins, of the Green Party, who sat for several minutes on her own, making notes, before heading off to speak with a staffer. She looked energised. This race was another in which the Greens had a reasonable chance, and little to lose. The others arrived: Bev Craig, the Labour leader of Manchester City Council; the Lib Dems’ Richard Kilpatrick, the Tories’ Phil Eckersley. A woman on my row was trying to spot the Reform candidate. “There,” she said, nudging her husband, pointing to a heavy-set bloke with a bright pink face, but the man took a seat in the audience. “OK – him – that’s Reform,” she declared of a scowling man in his thirties with aa side parting walking towards the stage, but this turned out to be the sound engineer. In fact, the Reform candidate, Sian Astley, had only made it as far as the front door before flouncing off. She would later claim that she had left in solidarity with an independent candidate who hadn’t been invited, but it’s possible she also didn’t fancy answering questions about her recent proposal that Green and Labour voters should be made to accommodate “illegal criminals, rapists and economic chancers” in their homes. The crowd had to make do with shouting “chicken” and “shame” at her empty chair.