We are constantly being told that what we really want in politics is ‘change’ and that the old two-party system is incapable of delivering it.

Well, that is certainly not the case here in Oldham. With elections for the local borough council less than a month away, both Labour and the Tories are doing something new, original and bold: they are saying nothing at all.

The Tories tell me that none of their candidates can talk to the Daily Mail because they are ‘staying out of this one’. A spokeswoman for the ruling Labour administration says that none of its candidates, or its leader, or any of its 27 sitting councillors will be talking to me either. All are ‘busy’.

In more than 30 years of covering election campaigns of varying sorts, I have never encountered a race where both of Britain’s two main political parties literally have nothing to say.

No doubt some of the electorate may find this refreshing. But it is extremely odd.

Have both Labour and the Tories simply given up? Or do they, secretly, want to lose?

You don’t have to spend long here in this vast, hilly 250,000-strong mix of urban, suburban and rural Greater Manchester to realise that something else is going on. For the electoral race for Oldham town hall has descended into a mire of poisonous and peculiar feuds so vicious that they threaten to make a mockery of the democratic process.

Amid incidents of cars being torched, hysterical shouting matches in the council chamber, accusations of paedophilia and brazen intimidation, it’s hardly surprising that some politicians would simply rather lie low, even if that might mean losing.

This is not even a full council election, but a battle for just 20 of the council’s 60 seats (which come up for election on a rotating basis). Yet things are still so nasty that Oldham is a national news story.

Throw into the mix the appearance on the ballot paper of a getaway driver for a cop-killing psychopath and you have all the makings of either a comedy or dark thriller. Or both.

‘People look at this place and they must think we’re as mad as a box of frogs,’ says Councillor Brian Hobin, who also happens to be this year’s deputy mayor.

As with all mayors, you’d expect him to be a collegiate sort talking up the local patch. And while he is fiercely proud of the place and of the brand new redevelopment of the town centre, the pub landlord from Failsworth also despairs of the way Oldham looks to the rest of the country. ‘People from the outside are going to look at this place and say: “I don’t want to invest any money there. I don’t want to go and live there.”’

Drill down and you soon come across two factors at the heart of this town hall toxicity: race and sexual abuse.

Oldham has been at the centre of multiple investigations into child sexual exploitation and rape by gangs of men, a disproportionate number of whom were of Asian heritage. Time and again, reports have suggested that this sordid scandal had not been fully explored for fear of stoking racial tensions in a town which endured terrible race riots in 2001.

In 2024, when rape victims and many Oldham councillors called for the state to commission a statutory inquiry – which would compel witnesses to give evidence – the minister for ‘safeguarding’, Jess Phillips, said the government would not intervene. This even prompted the US-based gazillionaire Elon Musk to call for Ms Phillips to be imprisoned.

Stung by the public response, Sir Keir Starmer announced that there would, after all, be a national inquiry. Back in Oldham, furious rows on the subject continued in the council chamber.

Events in Israel and Gaza then became another dividing line after a group of Asian Tory councillors were disciplined by their own party for attending a pro-Palestinian march in London. They left the Conservatives to form the ‘Oldham Group’ under the overarching banner of support for Gaza, along with a series of measures targeting the votes of Oldham’s substantial Muslim minority, such as an Islamic cemetery and scrapping fines for parking on the pavement in predominantly Asian parts of the borough.

Their Ferrari-driving leader has since forged an alliance with George Galloway’s far-Left Workers Party to seize seats off the ruling Labour group.

Having long taken the votes of the Asian community for granted, Labour now has a fight on its hands. In one key ward it is fighting on two fronts, against both the Oldham Group and also against the best-known candidate in this election. Everyone has heard of ‘Irish Imy’, Mohammed Imran Ali, a Pakistan-born boxing club manager who grew up in Ireland and then the Wernesh area of Oldham.

Following convictions for heroin dealing and assault, he spent six years in prison for driving a getaway car for one-eyed mobster Dale Cregan (Ali had not even passed his driving test). In 2013 Cregan ambushed and murdered two female police officers in an act of such savagery that he received a whole life sentence.

Ali was not involved in that atrocity, but had helped Cregan evade justice for other killings. He now wants voters to overlook his association with one of the most deplorable monsters in post-war British criminal history because he has done a lot of charity work since and wears well-cut suits. There’s no reply when I attempt to make contact.

A huge poster of him adorns the side of an entire house on Manchester Street and he is expected to do very well in the polls as an independent. He is also a close friend of the council’s Labour leader, Arooj Shah – as is Angela Rayner (the former Deputy Prime Minister whose Ashton-under-Lyne constituency is next door). Small world.

Needless to say, fingers were pointed at supporters of ‘Irish Imy’ Ali when an election candidate for the Oldham Group, Shah Bahram, awoke before Christmas to find his car ablaze outside. Two men had been seen pouring petrol over it before running off. On the same evening, a mysterious fire was started in front of the home of Mr Bahram’s mother.

The following month it was the turn of a Labour councillor, Jeremy Charters, who looked out to see his Mini Cooper Sport ablaze. CCTV revealed a masked man with a petrol can. Back in 2021, the same thing had happened to council leader Arooj Shah.

Greater Manchester Police have said in the past that they have ‘no intelligence’ to suggest a political link to any of these attacks. My request for an update goes unanswered. Perhaps it’s all a coincidence. Move along now. Happens all the time.

It hardly instils much confidence in either the police or the system. One Liberal Democrat councillor, Helen Bishop, has complained publicly that ‘proper gangland stuff’ is now dissuading people from standing for office here.

The festering spirit of mutual loathing seems to cross all party lines. Sixteen months ago, police had to be called during a housing debate to stop fighting in the council chamber. The Conservative deputy leader had called an independent councillor a ‘Nazi’, whereupon there was pushing and shoving and the meeting was abandoned.

Of one thing we can be certain. Politics in Oldham has moved since Winston Churchill, MP for the town in the 1900s, praised it as a place of ‘warm hearts and bright eyes’.

Now, of course, there is another component to the electoral picture. Nigel Farage is making inroads here, just as he is all over the country. Seven months ago, that same Tory deputy leader, Lewis Quigg, announced that he had defected to Reform, taking two independent councillors with him. The party is fielding candidates in all 20 wards whereas the Conservatives – no longer the main opposition here – are fighting just 13 of them. ‘The Tory party is on its backside,’ says Mr Quigg. ‘They’re on the way out.’

Mr Quigg says Reform is campaigning against reckless Labour spending, arguing that the council has spent £68million relocating its own offices to smart new premises above the council-owned Spindles shopping centre, adding: ‘One of my colleagues in this election is a proper accountant. He’ll enjoy looking through the books.’

He also claims that Oldham politics are being split down racial lines. ‘We’re opposed to this sectarianism. End of,’ he says, pointing to the years of inertia over the child grooming gangs plus the Oldham Group’s obsession with Gaza and a parking free-for-all wherever the Asian vote just happens to be strongest.

I meet Kamran Ghafoor, leader of the Oldham Group, for a coffee. He has been on quite a political journey. After being a student activist at the local college, he became one of Manchester’s youngest councillors on a Labour ticket. He then stepped away from politics to build up a property business before returning as a Conservative councillor.

He was a keen fan of the Cameron coalition but fell out with the Conservatives when they told him he would need to attend ‘diversity training’ after attending a pro-Palestinian march in London in 2023.

Now, he has aligned with the far-Left firebrand George Galloway, and calls himself ‘a Muslim, a family man and a conservative in mindset – a capitalist but with a social conscience’. Dad came from Kashmir to work in a local mill but Mr Ghafoor is an ‘Oldhamer born and bred’ who grew up on benefits and is proud to own more than 100 properties while driving a smart car (‘I used to have a Rolls-Royce’).

When I ask him how protesting against Israel is going to fix potholes in Chadderton, he is unapologetic. ‘Of course we condemn Hamas for the [October 2023] attack, but I can’t sit back and watch 75,000 innocent people die because of a group of idiots.’

He is a vocal supporter of a full investigation into the grooming gangs scandal. ‘Look, we’re not protecting paedophiles from our community. We stood up in the council and said let the people who’ve perpetrated these heinous crimes be punished. As Muslims, we’d go a lot further than just putting them into jail. We’d castrate them. There should be a death penalty for people like that.’

As for local policies specifically aimed at the Muslim community [a quarter of Oldham’s population], that’s politics, he says. It’s why he wanted to regenerate the shopping centre as a bazaar-style destination for Asian shoppers across the North-West with specialist food, fashion and bridalwear outlets.

‘If I want to live in a certain area because I have my mosque there or my family in the area or my doctor or school, that’s why people move into certain areas. It’s human nature. Now, every candidate that Labour are putting into some areas is Asian, because the Asian vote has gone up.

‘But if you vote for the Labour Party, you’re not going to get a separate stand-alone Muslim cemetery. If you vote the Oldham Group into power, we will give you a Muslim cemetery.’

He says he regularly receives anonymous threats but is not going to be deterred.

Though Labour is unavailable for interview, the council leader, Arooj Shah, sends me a statement reminding me her team has won awards and has balanced the budget. ‘While others flounder, we have been busy securing record investment in Oldham’s regeneration – £450m on the town centre alone. That money didn’t fall out of the sky. It came because this administration has credibility.’

There is also a pointed swipe at her Reform and Oldham Group rivals: ‘Although I recognise some opposition groups are determined to sow division amongst our communities, I’m proud to say that despite the noise in the council chamber, we are delivering.’

Back in his pub, the Mare and Foal in Failsworth, deputy mayor Brian Hobin – who says he is an admirer of both Margaret Thatcher and Ms Shah – believes that the rise in sectarian politics is simply driving both Left and Right towards extremism here.

However, he also accepts that the erosion of the old two-party system and the rise of independents – like himself – may have something to do with it. The outlook, he admits, is bleak: ‘Like I said – we’re mad as a box of frogs. We’re the daftest.’