Ashley owns Sports Direct. He went after Andy Burnham on Thursday. The fight was over plans to revive the UK high street. Ashley called those proposals populist and delusional. He said they would be disastrous for retail.
Burnham is the Mayor of Greater Manchester. He has pushed policies aimed at supporting struggling high streets. Ashley rebuffed the strategy. He said it was steered by politics instead of hands-on retail knowledge. The two are at odds. They disagree on how or whether government intervention can reverse the slump of town centre shopping.