Andy Burnham is on the cusp of becoming Britain’s first prime minister from the North-west since Robert Peel in 1841. But when he meets the actual King at Buckingham Palace, he will carry with him the scars of a city built – and undermined – by foreign money. And a stinking, toxic dump that has pitched him against the Crown.
Burnham’s rise is built on a philosophy dubbed ‘Manchesterism’. Rose Marley, chief executive of Co-operatives UK and a former adviser to Burnham, told Channel 4 News: “Burnham has done what he said he was going to do in Manchester.” Former Manchester city council leader Richard Leese echoed the view. Yet the reality on the ground is far from polished.
“Andy Burnham faces King Charles over a toxic dump as Chinese-funded towers lie unfinished in Manchester.”
Walk through the city centre, and holes in the ground outnumber finished towers. The “New Vic” development, a mass of skyscrapers partly funded by Chinese money – the exact amount kept secret by the council – sits with slogans like “For the enlightened” aimed at graduates, but many apartments remain empty. Nearby, the Angel Square development is “coming soon”. On Dantzic Street, Pinnacle, a UK developer, went into administration in 2017 after failing to build tower blocks, leaving Hong Kong off-plan buyers short some £31 million. Manchester police and the Serious Fraud Squad investigated but no charges were laid for lack of evidence. A Hong Kong company, Far Eastern Consortium, bought the site; construction is delayed. Beijing Construction Engineering Group International and CR Construction are among other Chinese players.
It is this fractured, unfinished Manchester that Burnham will leave behind – but another battle awaits him at the palace. The Duchy of Lancaster, King Charles’s private estate valued at £687m, owns more than a third of a 250-tonne illegal dump in Bickerstaff, near Wigan. Described in the House of Lords as “the most dangerous illegal dump in England”, the site is toxic and rat-infested. The Duchy has offered to give the land back to Wigan Council, shifting the clean-up cost to taxpayers.
Burnham, as Greater Manchester mayor, told Channel 4: “I don’t think that is an acceptable response. There are ancient laws in force in this part of the world where people die without a will and that money goes to the Duchy. Well, how about using some of that money for a purpose that would really benefit our communities?” He contrasted the Duchy’s refusal with the speed of a similar clean-up in Kidlington, Oxfordshire. “Why does it end up like this in the North, but is cleaned up in the South?”
The two Kings – Burnham and Charles – will soon sit face to face. Their shared stage is a Britain divided not just by class, but by concrete, by cash, and by the stench of a dump that refuses to go away.