Everyone who’s anyone in Oldham knows Irish Imy. Born Mohammed Imran Ali in Dublin in 1980 and raised in Werneth in south-west Oldham, Imy is the borough’s recurring bad guy. He’s done time for assault, trafficking heroin and being the getaway driver for the murderer Dale Cregan, who shot three people and blew up their bodies with grenades in 2012. Naturally, Imy now wants to be a politician. He’s standing in this year’s local elections as an independent, promising to ‘Make Werneth Great Again’. His campaign is not regarded as insane. He may win.

Imy is capitalising on the sense that this Greater Manchester borough is corrupt. People in Oldham say the local elections are rigged and believe that council seats are handed out through the South Asian biradari clan system. They say the town’s grooming gangs scandal has become a political toy and they worry about the increasing number of intimidatory crimes in the area. Last month, another candidate in the upcoming May locals was targeted in a double arson attack. In one night his car was petrol-bombed and his mother’s garden was torched. He has now decided to not stand in the upcoming elections.

Winston Churchill was the MP for Oldham in the early 1900s and said that its people had ‘warm hearts and bright eyes’. Oldhamers today are more cynical.

I asked Brian Hobin, Oldham’s deputy mayor, how to find Irish Imy. ‘Just look for the biggest and flashiest car you can see,’ he replied. I had visited Hobin at the pub he runs to talk about the state of Oldham’s politics (‘It’s toxic’). Afterwards he offered to drive me to my appointment with Imy, whom he knows by reputation. We found him in a black Volkswagen Amarok, a bruising 4×4 which is also used by the Dutch military. ‘I hope Brian’s been saying good things,’ Imy said as he got out and gripped my hand. The deputy mayor smiled weakly and left.

At a café on the top floor of a furniture shop, Imy claimed that he was standing for the council to ‘break up the little boys’ club’. For about 20 years Oldham has been run the same way by the same people. ‘That chamber,’ Imy said, ‘it’s a circus.’ Many Oldhamers believe this. Partly that’s because of the way council candidates seem to be chosen. People from all political and religious backgrounds complain that in wards such as Werneth, St Mary’s and Alexandra, local elections are........

© The Spectator