Despite some of last week’s The MJ Future Forum speakers being non-quotable and non-tweetable due to pre-election purdah (clearly a reason for attending our next one!) I can report on its key themes which, in my view, were threefold.

The first is that it has been a remarkably packed agenda for local government since the 2015 May election. The second is that despite the government rhetoric on devolution there are aspects of its policies which are completely the opposite. The third is that the localisation of all business rate and the phasing out of revenue support grant is not only the biggest shake up in local government finance in decades but potentially a vast elephant trap.