Jen Williams

The context for it is that when Andy Burnham, just before Andy Burnham became mayor in 2017, Greater Manchester had agreed a pot of money with the Treasury, and it was used partly to help build the skyscrapers that you can see in the city centre now.

And it was lent out to various developers to build those as part of the efforts to regenerate the city centre.

Andy Burnham had promised to make that fund all about social housing if he got into office and then sort of, generally speaking, kind of didn't.

And has then subsequently been sued by a developer that didn't get access to that money, who argues that it was lent unlawfully and various accusations around interest rates.

That case has come back to court this week and whether or not it's won or lost, what it has done is an airing for this idea that reform is able to pick up on as an attack line that Andy Burnham has been lining the pockets of private developers in Manchester city centre.

So the optics of that are not ideal if you're trying to argue that you have a kind of insurgent man of the people status and the timing certainly isn't.

I have had it come up in a negative way, actually, but only for one or two people.

Yeah, yeah.

But I think what's interesting about it is that people have noticed it.

They are aware of it.

They're trying to get that to stick and you can see why they would because, you know, Andy's campaign slogan is literally for us.

Right.

Like that is where this is being fought.

Well, I mean, it was basically a wipeout for Labour in the Borough of Wigan, which is where we are.

I also think, you know, one of reform's tricks has absolutely been to turn a bunch of people out who don't normally vote.

And this has taken Labour unawares in a lot of places, actually, over the last couple of years.

There have been instances where Labour have been pretty confident of their own data.

It's as good as it can possibly be, but they haven't been able to find those people who actually have come out of nowhere, who don't normally vote, and they've gone out and voted before.

And I think also it's the other side of that gender question as well, right?

I was chatting to a reform voter when I was out talking to people here last week.