Andy Burnham

Andy Burnham

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Why Manchester is the greatest city in the UK, by mayor Andy Burnham

Why Manchester is the greatest city in the UK, by mayor Andy Burnham

Andy Burnham is a big fan of Manchester. As the mayor of the city and its surrounding region, he couldn’t not be. But he was still chuffed to hear it had come third in our annual ranking of the world’s greatest cities – and first in the UK. In his own words, here’s why it’s so great. On Manchester’s sense of community ‘This place always comes together when times are hard. And it’s done that again. From my point of view – because we’ve obviously had some differences of opinion with the government through the pandemic – I can’t tell you what it means when I raise my voice and I look behind me and people are just there. The place comes together and it’s hard to put it into words how much it means: there’s just a sense of right and wrong here.’ On Black Lives Matter ‘If you look back at Manchester’s history, this has always been the case. I made the point in the middle of Black Lives Matter, in summer last year. Obviously, that was a really difficult moment – difficult in that people here were outraged. But the commitment to a truly diverse city goes back a long way. I’d reference the fact that the mill workers in the nineteenth century stood together when there was the cotton blockade in the American Civil War. Even when the loss of cotton was putting the mills dark and everyone was struggling for their jobs, the workers here voted that they would not handle slave-picked cotton. People here were saying Black Lives Matter 160 years ago.’ On the difficulty of the past year ‘There