‘It’s basically a dictatorship,’ one insider tells me. If you want to build anything in Britain’s second city, you have to get permission from the so-called ‘Manchester mafia’. These are the officials who have overseen the city’s extraordinary redevelopment. The number of towers in Manchester has increased sevenfold since Andy Burnham became mayor in 2017.

You might assume that Burnham is the boss of this mafia family. But you’d be wrong. ‘He just appears at the meetings and says, “Yes, yes, that’s fine”,’ explains a source. ‘His political involvement is minimal,’ confirms Andrew Teacher, a real estate adviser who’s worked in the city. ‘The ship was motoring along well before he arrived.’ The vast redevelopment had almost nothing to do with Burnham.

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In fact, much of the foundation was laid by George Osborne. The........

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