Great blog Brad. Have re blogged it for those who follow Sustainable Cities. I hesitate to say it because I hope it won’t be true, but by reducing the available expenditure for local authorities Osborne will virtually bully cities into accepting the mayoral model as the only way of courting favour. Note how Osborne has moved centre stage on this now that the election is over.
Call me a cynic, but I fully expected the slow ramping up of the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ rhetoric to wither and die once the latest election cycle had come and gone. Such is the general feeling toward those holding the purse and policy strings in Whitehall. There have been a number of interesting debates developing, especially given the rise in apparent nationalism in both Scotland (the tight referendum and the rise of the SNP) and England (calls for an English Parliament and a hefty bunch of votes for UKIP). As regions like Greater Manchester and Yorkshire and the Humber have economies and populations that equal or better Scotland and Wales, it was only a matter of time before English devolution was taken seriously. As Nick Clegg once said, “the cat is out of the bag” on UK devolution.
Therefore it perhaps was slightly surprising to see the Chancellor up here again talking…
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