Greater?

The integration of health and social care is an excellent idea. It has existed in Northern Ireland for decades. What I find difficult to understand is why this, and its wholesale devolution to local government, is being pioneered in Greater Manchester.

The Conservative Party runs one of the 10 metropolitan boroughs there. Manchester itself has been Lib Dem, although Labour currently holds 95 of its 96 seats, with the only other member being an Independent. Most of the other eight are permanently Labour, and none is currently controlled by any other party.

Surely the same number of people, albeit spread over a larger area, could have been found in, say, the Thames Valley?

But in the course of the present Parliament, "the North", like "the old working class" and "the traditional Labour vote", has been elevated to the status of the Soul of the Nation, despite the fact that that would mean that Labour ought properly to have won every General Election since the War.

However, the only place in "the North" that they can name is Manchester.

Unlike the little more than ceremonial office of Mayor of London, which is so part-time and apolitical that even Boris Johnson can do it, the proposed Mayor of Greater Manchester, who in practice would be bound to be Labour, would be the Prince of his City-State, and one of the most powerful individual politicians in Europe, since ultimately answerable to no one between elections.

Even the big city mayors of the United States do not run healthcare. There are EU member-states with considerably fewer inhabitants than Greater Manchester.

Ponder these things.