Ten weeks into his premiership, it’s good to see that Andy Burnham is being as good as his word when it comes to looking out for the North. Not least with the government’s announcement this week that Avanti West Coast – operators of the lousy Manchester-to-London rail service – will be brought into public ownership.
It`s regrettable, however, that the prime minister`s enthusiasm for levelling up public transport isn’t matched by an eagerness to confront far more dangerous concerns facing the North. Namely, that a harrowing catalogue of extremist networks and terror plots against Manchester’s Jewish community has rendered the city the de facto terrorist capital of the country.
For Burnham, that Manchester has become an incubator for terrorism should be personal. Not least because he holds my home town (and his creakily titled Manchesterism) as an economic and political blueprint for the rest of the country.
However, on this grievous aspect of life in Manchester, the one-time self-styled King of the North has little to say beyond the token observations of a performative politician.
That he is so selective in his guardianship of the city – trains and buses first, Jews last – is a shameful betrayal. Not only of Mancunian Jews like me who are living in the crosshairs, and who, though unbowed, feel the threat. But of every decent person in Britain, since it semaphores that Burnham is failing in the most fundamental responsibility of any government: to keep its people safe.
Meanwhile, the evidence of terror threats rooted in Manchester continues to gather pace. Only a few days ago, two men were arrested by counter-terror police in the Northern Quarter on suspicion of targeting the city’s Jewish community. Chillingly, the news broke on the eve of Yom Kippur, almost a year after the deadly terror attack carried out by Jihad Al-Shamie at my family’s synagogue, the Heaton Park shul. The atrocity left members Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby dead and other worshippers seriously injured.
This follows the jailing last February of Walid Saadaoui and Amar Hussein who were planning an Islamic State-inspired attack on Jews in Manchester that police said could have been “the UK’s most deadly terror attack”.
So given such a mortal dossier of murderous intent and the fact that the prime minister has centred so much of his blokeish political identity around Manchester why isn’t Burnham mounting a concrete response? Why isn’t he roaring with defiance that he will not allow his – my – beloved Manchester to be framed and branded in this way and announce concrete policies to address the issue? Not simply by providing more money for security – higher walls and more CCTV are not the answer – but with unflinching, proactive plans of action to quash the root causes of Islamist terrorism in Manchester and the UK. This ought to include targeting the radicalisation that takes place in mosques and online along with the vicious anti-Israel invective that goes far beyond the parameters of free speech.
For while the admirable work of the police and security services – not least that spearheaded by the admirable Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Stephen Watson – is gratefully acknowledged, we need much more.
What sticks in the craw is that Burnham, formerly Mayor of Greater Manchester, knows our Jewish community well. At a vigil outside the Heaton Park synagogue last year that took place days after the attack, he stormed: “An attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.” But now such promises have been blown away by the gale force of political calculus. Pleasing the Muslim sectarian vote and hard-left backbenchers, rather than protecting innocent people, is clearly more important for ensuring his own parliamentary security. We see it in Burnham’s spineless, tactical and self-serving position on Israel – most recently the performative boycott of goods from the West Bank. A move praised by Hamas and which can only embolden antisemites operating in Manchester and beyond (as the Chief Rabbi pointed out such sanctions, which could inflict real harm on the Jewish community, appear to be driven by “domestic politics”).
Contrast the government`s disproportionate action towards the admittedly unacceptable behaviour of a few settler hotheads in the West Bank with the absence of any comparable plan to confront the empirical evidence that Manchester has become a hub for terrorist activity.
Instead, Burnham appears content to allow the reputation of a city he claims is at the heart of his anti-Westminster, new-frontier style of government to be stained and shamed by his inaction.
Let`s be clear. The prime minister’s tactical inertia isn’t just about we Jews in Manchester. It is a matter for the entire country since the wider community is also prey to terrorism. Last summer, Mohammed Asim Bashir was jailed for life after making the ten-hour round trip from Manchester to the UK Defence Academy in Shrivenham, Oxfordshire, where he carried out “hostile reconnaissance” alongside Heaton Park attacker Jihad Al-Shamie as part of plans for a mass-casualty attack at a British military site.
Andy Burnham, with his love of The Smiths, a good pub snack and his Manchester-based government operation, may think he is the authentic deal. He may believe that being a blokeish Northerner is shorthand for integrity. Instead, the prime minister’s failure to announce meaningful action to root out terrorism in a city he claims to love makes one thing clear to Mancunians: he really isn’t one of us. And to all the people he is supposed to protect, nor is he one of you too.
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