I went to the Hacienda once, in the early nineties, as a weekender from London who queued for an hour, paid over the odds for a warm lager and was let down all night by men in bucket hats. Years later, as an investor in an online rental marketplace in Manchester, a trip to meetings took me through a clubhouse, at which point I was reborn as real estate.
The world’s most famous nightclub is now a luxury flat. On Monday afternoon, watching Andy Burnham outside Number 10 promising to be Britain’s circuit breaker, it was the flats I kept thinking about.
The universe rarely gives you a clean metaphor. The Hacienda was a Manchester nightclub that defined the decade, presented a thousand bands and lost money on almost every pint ever sold. It was owned by Factory Records and Tony Wilson, a man who was so averse to paperwork that he signed his artists a contract written in his own blood, promising them everything and the company nothing.
Which brings us, with grim inevitability, to our new Prime Minister.
Burnham arrived at Downing Street this week as the seventh person since 2016, a churn rate that would embarrass even a Manchester band. Joy Division lost their frontman and were renamed New Order. The crew have now pulled the same trick twice in two years and are hoping no one will look at the back catalogue. Starmer is gone, and the team is trying hard not to look back in anger.
However, credit where it’s due: the man can talk. His first speech from the steps of Number 10, promising a new political model, a new economic model and a renaissance of Britain, was one of the strongest the government has issued in years. Definitely Maybe, as the manifesto goes. Whether the album holds up is another question entirely.
Then came the line changes, done with all the calm of a Gallagher soundcheck. Peter Kyle, the one minister who loaded the van on late payments to small firms, has been sacked. And the nation’s checkbook gave, with the first shock, to John Healey, the man who came out of the last group behind money and was now put in charge of everything. Some might say that takes away the brass. The gilt market, humming Blue Monday itself, nudged similarly productive.
And this is where business students will see the song, because the Factory crisis is an old form of business failure. Wilson had the best story in Britain, the best designers, the best talent, and no economic sector. Blue Monday became the best-selling 12-inch of all time in a die-cut sleeve that cost the label money on every copy. The Hacienda was slaughtered seven nights a week and bled money for fifteen years. Narrative is not a margin. The vibes are not the flow of money. A passionate founder with a vision for change and not holding the towel is not a matter of growth, he is a warning, and most of us have supported at least one to know.
The till, meanwhile, needs attention. Eight out of 10 SME owners say they are prepared for the impact, and the CBI has told the new Prime Minister that scrapping green levies on business energy debt, currently 45 per cent above the G7 average, must be a day one priority. His opening loophole, abolishing VAT on electricity, sounds like a contradiction until you read the fine print and find out that most firms will not qualify. A radio edit, if you will, of the best verse cut.
And yet love will not tear us apart yet, for a counterexample is parked at Burnham’s old door. The Oasis reunion he watched from the mayor’s office helped drive a record £11.2 billion in music tourism spending, including £1.4 billion in the North West alone. The Gallaghers, once the country’s most spectacular riot, returned as one of the best-conducted reunions in live music history. Proof that Manchester swagger and a well-managed balance sheet can share the stage. People change. Even Manchester learned to love a spreadsheet.
That’s a comprehensive assessment of this Premier, and it’s up to par with the established list. If the circuit breaker means the Factory, all blood deals and good news and nobody gets paid, British business will be sitting down, as James ordered, with its head in its hands. If it means Heaton Park, the same swagger as a master on the mats, then this, as the Stone Roses almost put it, could be the one.
The Hacienda is, after all, more valuable as apartments than the club it once was as a business. Wilson used to say that the Factory learned more from failure than from success, which was helpful, because failure was all the accounts ever produced.
Go, Prime Minister, and think how you go. Will Andy Burnham end up twisting the melons of British business?
