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Labour’s candidate to replace Andy Burnham as Greater Manchester mayor has been named as Bev Craig, the leader of the city council.

Burnham, who could be prime minister in under four weeks, is expected to campaign heavily for Labour in a tight contest with Reform UK on 30 July.

As many as 2 million people will be eligible to vote in the Greater Manchester byelection, making it the biggest in modern times in British politics.

Craig, 41, has long been seen as a rising star within Labour and took over Manchester city council in 2021 at the age of 36, becoming only the third holder of the office in four decades and its first woman.

Like many council leaders, however, she remains little-known to ordinary voters. A huge publicity blitz will pitch her as continuing the work of Burnham, who won the 2024 contest with nearly two-thirds of the vote and a 351,000-vote majority.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/23/bev-craig-stand-labour-candidate-greater-manchester-mayor


I agree on the last - I am a pol and betting nerd and have never heard of her until this week.

I have a fairly new colleague who lives on my route

He made a complaint about me to Royal Mail, as a customer last week

as a bit of banter, or for real?

For real

His delivery point is ten yards from his neighbour’s. There’s a door gate in between. He complained because I used it

He wanted me to reverse seventy yards up his drive, open and then close his heavy, slightly broken gate. Walk the rest of the way across his large garden, deliver walk back, open and close again, and then drive round to his neighbour, ten yards from his door

He claims to be scared that I’ll let his loose running dog escape, and it’ll be mauled by the neighbour’s dogs

Sp why didn’t he raise that with you privately?

A lot of people get shirty when delivery people short cut from one house to the next. I was told not to do it when leafletting by the organiser.

Natasha Clark
@NatashaC
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1h
Bridget Phillipson tells @AndrewMarr9 @lbc she will go get a T-shirt saying “spiteful class warrior” after her spat with Kemi Badenoch

Badenoch is a nasty piece of work.

John Crace nails it:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/jun/24/graceless-kemi-badenoch-keir-starmer-pmqs-sketch

"Here was a chance for Kemi Badenoch to show her human side. To give the world a rare sighting of her empathy gene. But Kemi just can’t go there. She can’t read a room. She has only one mode. All-out attack. Other people’s moments of weakness are just material for her to use against them. Even now, she probably thinks she played a blinder at prime minister’s questions. A chance taken to humiliate Keir when he’s down. She has no idea how graceless she is. How charmless. All the more so because she has played no part in Starmer’s resignation. The Conservatives have just been bystanders. There has been no dramatic intervention by Kemi. No set piece in which she has exposed his weakness and forced the issue. Keir’s departure was purely between him and the Labour party. It was Keir’s MPs who had given up on him. No one else. "

"The mad thing is that it would have taken so little for Kemi to have come out of PMQs looking good. In their first exchanges after a Downing Street resignation, it’s customary for the leader of the opposition to say something complimentary about the outgoing prime minister. It doesn’t even have to be very much. She could have said she admired his steadfast support for Ukraine. Or gone for the human touch. That she had enjoyed the conversations they had held in private. Had loved meeting his wife and kids. Wished him all the very best. But Kemi would rather die than do this. She sees kindness as a sign of weakness. It would have cost her what passes for her self-worth. Had she done this – allowed even a forced croak of kindness to escape her lips – then everything that followed would have been OK. Kemi would have bossed the show. As it was, she crashed and burned. Her language becoming progressively more angry and violent the longer she went on. It was the behaviour of a spoiled child. A playground bully whom her party doesn’t dare to call out."

She seems to be upsetting all the right people

And gaining in popularity which is again upsetting some

And just recall how Starmer behaved towards Boris in exactly the same way

And the idea she played no part in Starmer's downfall is nonsense because without her humble address Starmer would have got away with Mandelson

Politics is Politics

The truth hurts and Kemi is sticking it to them. Bravo.

https://x.com/mbdaytrading/status/2069698353307296240

Andy Burnham is backing a proposal to scrap Council Tax and Stamp Duty, replacing them with a Proportional Property Tax (PPT).

📌 Rate: 0.48% of current property value
📌 Cap: £1,200 per year initially
📌 Supporters claim 77% of households would save an average £556 annually

A major reform if it ever gains traction. Winners and losers would depend heavily on property values and location.

Why 0.48?
Why not 0.5? It's so close as to make no difference and would be easier to work out.
Hope it's going to go on empty properties held as investments too.

I think it's x2 on investment, second properties etc. Should be x5

It's half of a good policy. But there are two missed opportunities here:

1. It is a perfect candidate for tax devolution. Let local authorities set the rates. The danger is this further centralises collection, rather than the opposite. I'm surprised given this comes from someone who's supposedly a devo fan
2. It should be set on land value, not house value