UK Column News — 31st August 2026

**Ben Rubin** (0:08)
Good afternoon. It's Monday, 31st of August, 2026, just after one o'clock. You're watching UK Column News. I'm your host, Ben Rubin. I'm delighted to be joining the studio today by Mr. Brian Gerrish. Hi, Brian, how are you?

**Brian Gerrish** (0:21)
A pleasure. After a really wonderful weekend. Fantastic. And we had rain, of course.

**Ben Rubin** (0:26)
We do.

**Brian Gerrish** (0:27)
So, death by sunshine, fading into the distance.

**Ben Rubin** (0:30)
Indeed, it is, yes. But I'm sure they'll find some way to turn that into a bad news story, no doubt. And we're also delighted to be joined by video link by Madeleine Hunt from the Heritage Party, who'll be joining us on the show a little bit later and also for Extra. I'm very happy to say. Now, there's a lot going on in the country, as I'm sure you've noticed. We're going to be talking today about forced adoption in Scotland. Just another black mark against the care system in Scotland and elsewhere across the UK. We're going to be looking at some shameless anti-Russian propaganda that's been put out recently by the BBC, sharing some great news from Iceland as the results of the EU referendum came in over the weekend. Looking at the efforts to push back against local councils, which seems to, I've been talking about that quite a lot recently myself, and people are very interested in this. Madeleine is going to be talking about the great work that she's been doing to achieve the same goals. But before we get into all of that, we're going to be looking at the term of the past few months anyway. It's this one, it's Manchesterism.
Parliament is in recess, all of the MPs are on holiday or doing whatever it is that they do at this time of year. But the agenda has already been set.
They're going ahead with it and there's no discussion about this. And what we want to understand is what is Manchesterism? Where does it come from? And who's it going to benefit?

**Brian Gerrish** (2:06)
They are behind the secret doors of number 10 of the North. Yes.

**Ben Rubin** (2:12)
So this is obviously the new governing philosophy of our brand spanking new selected Prime Minister Andy Burnham.
It's been presented as some kind of economic miracle, as an organic experiment by the good and hard working people of Manchester who've just come up with a magic formula that's going to fix the country. But actually, when we dig into it, it appears to have been designed by unelected state operatives and highly remunerated consultants working for international capital. And what I tend to think of as the global predator class.
Now, the story we're being sold is largely economic, actually. We're talking about growth. I showed this chart a few weeks ago when Burnham was first installed. And essentially what they're saying is economic growth in Manchester has outstripped all the other city regions. Therefore, they must be doing something right. And we should follow along with whatever they say, essentially. But what is actually delivered in Manchester? So a total transformation of the skyline. So we can see here from 2010 to 2025, an enormous number of very ugly, tall, boxy, horrible, modern buildings going up.

**Brian Gerrish** (3:23)
Crinkly, crinkly tin sheds.

**Ben Rubin** (3:26)
Crinkly tin sheds. Yes, exactly. Many of which people can't even afford to live in, right? So you've got a bunch of these flats appearing that are more than the average person can afford to pay to live in. Yeah. And at the same time, they've destroyed the fabric of the city, the traditional fabric of the city. They've bulldozed away the industrial capacity, which is what actually made Manchester wealthy in the first place. And this is all done using a model which effectively nationalizes risk while privatizing profits. There's a lot of property developers who've made a lot of money. There's a lot of government departments that have funded their own operations. But actually what we've been left with is a destroyed cityscape and a bunch of buildings that no one can afford to live in. Doesn't really feel like this is going to work for the country, but they are pressing ahead with it. And we want to understand where this has come from. So I've been digging into this since Burnham was installed in number 10
And I'm going to take you through this little diagram I've put together. My labor of love of the past few days, which is as simple as possible, but no simpler, I think. It doesn't include all the detail, but it does have some of the central figures and organizations and policies that have driven this whole thing forward over the past 30 years. And it is a 30-year journey. So actually, the regeneration of Manchester, which kind of kicked this whole thing off, was a direct consequence of the Manchester bombing in June 1996, where a 3,300-pound bomb was set off apparently by the IRA, although there's never actually been any kind of resolution to this. So we don't know if it was actually the IRA.