The Tories’ “Northern Powerhouse” has always relied on historical tropes about bootstrap industrialisation. But it now owes more to the Highland Clearances and Peterloo.
The North’s rockstar-scally-addicts aren’t romantic heroes – they’re examples of commodification in action.
As the Corbynistas besiege the New Labour diehards, as in other Labour-run councils, the main battleground is housing. Meanwhile, Salford is pursuing a genuinely radical path.
Badly thought through pro-Soviet posturing among the new left risks undermining the possibility of a Labour Party election victory.
Is Manchester merely a playground for tired Madchester myths, property speculators and discredited Osbornomics? Or is there a chance for something more radical to emerge from the controversial Manchester International Festival?
The default white western view of Islam as a sealed world is wrong.
Andy Burnham has hit the ground running with an honest campaign around housing, although some of the ghosts of New Labour remain.
The left need to face the hard truth of False Consciousness: We actually need more of what has just happened, not less. Paradoxically, the left now need to let go in order to get to grips with the new situation.
The liberal consensus is over, says Steve Hanson. The chilling signs are everywhere as this year ends. The left must pick it up and reshape it rather than let it fall.
How the choice between city devolution or evolution is false and new regional constitutions risk being simply bolted on to the existing constitutional mess.
We should be imagining the present, not the future, in our public spaces.
