In last week’s local elections, Oldham lost its third council leader in succession. Labour’s Amanda Chadderton, who had made it her mission to stabilise Oldham and rebuild trust with local people, suffered the same fate as her predecessors in 2021 and 2022. After losing her seat, Chadderton pointed to the toxic forces that have poisoned Oldham’s politics in recent year, forces that we reported on extensively here on The Mill. “I have death threats, my house is double alarmed, I carry a police alarm,” Chadderton said. “The police have had to follow me home so no one else follows me home.”

But there is a broader story in Oldham than one about a borough beset by conspiracy theories and allegations of council corruption and incomptence. As we’ve suggested in our past reporting, the background to the political chaos is a more prosaic story about jobs and incomes and economics – and of a town left behind by the growth of Greater Manchester and struggling to find its role in the modern world. That’s the subject of today’s story by Daniel Timms, our data and policy reporter, who has been speaking to the authors of a report that was supposed to open a new chapter for Oldham. So the question is: can it?