The Mancunian Way: An odd boast

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Here is today's Mancunian Way:

by BETH ABBIT - Thurs Aug 4, 2022

Afternoon,

Leadership hopeful Rishi Sunak is continuing in his quest to endear himself to Tory members - this time by boasting he has taken money from ‘deprived urban areas’ to help wealthy towns.

That might go down well in Tunbridge Wells, where he made the claim, but Conservative voters in some of the most deprived boroughs here in Greater Manchester might not be quite so chuffed.

More on that story, the Oldham mill investigation and Andy Burnham's blokey DJ set, in today's newsletter.

Labour's Lisa Nandy has demanded answers after Rishi Sunak told Conservative members he started 'changing the funding formulas to make sure that areas like this are getting the funding that they deserve'. He was talking about affluent Tunbridge Wells.

The New Statesman's Rachel Wearmouth uncovered video of the former chancellor's comments during which he said: "Because we inherited a bunch of formulas from the Labour Party that shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas, that needed to be undone. I started the work of undoing that.”

Ms Nandy has written to Levelling Up Secretary and Tunbridge Wells MP Greg Clark about Mr Sunak’s ‘deeply concerning’ claim. “It’s scandalous that Rishi Sunak funnelled public money away from deprived areas and gave it to affluent Tory shires,” the Wigan MP tweeted: “The Levelling Up Secretary needs to urgently investigate what changes were made to funding formulas and what justified the changes.”

Meanwhile Manchester Council leader Bev