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When Jim McMahon decided to throw his hat in the ring following Michael Meacher’s death in October, it took many by surprise. Having impressed many in Greater Manchester and beyond since taking over as Oldham council leader in 2011 when he was just 28, it was widely assumed he would stand to be the region’s first elected mayor in 2017.

Yet he couldn’t resist the opportunity to represent his adopted home town in parliament (he was born and brought up down the road in Miles Platting, a deprived area of north Manchester). He insists he would only stand in Oldham, pointing out he’s never tried to run elsewhere. And in an interview with me last week he admitted that he may find being an opposition MP frustrating.



“I know for a fact I’ve got more power and resources now than I will if I become a backbench MP,” he said in an interview at Oldham College, where he went back to study after leaving school at 16. “But I’m looking to the future, saying: what does my town look like in 10, 15, 20 years? And I can say there’s only so much we can do as a council when the money is coming out as quickly as it is, when public services are being decimated.”

He continued: “Look around now, you see the police stations closing, the magistrates’ court closing, the county court, the job centre is likely to close and we’ve only got one. HMRC [tax] offices are likely to close. They’ll take jobs into central Manchester and have a bare bones of a council service here or get people to go online. So I see as a council leader I can do more immediately today but what I can’t do is have the money to get the infrastructure in place to get the decent quality jobs that Oldham needs, and the only way I can see that happen is with a decent Labour government and I want to play my part in seeing that.”