There was a feeling of giddy anticipation in Manchester on Wednesday evening. Oasis hadn't even arrived for their homecoming concerts, but along with the bucket-hatted revellers in the summer sun, 90s Manc music poured out of the pubs onto the crowded pavements. 

Some of those pubs were opposite the newly open and restyled Campfield, the venue for another 1990's retro occasion: a Labour politician making a popular and populist case for his ambitions. The event was what might normally be thought of as rather humdrum: the launch of the new Greater Manchester Strategy. 

It was anything but. I came away feeling like this was an occasion we might just look back on as one of those moments when English Devolution came of age. It felt like the wholesale or business to business politics of devolution was wheeled out into the sunlit uplands of retail politics, with Andy Burnham speaking directly to the people of Greater Manchester. 

And it all happened within shouting distance of the Power Hall of the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry where, just over eleven years ago, Chancellor George Osborne made the Northern Powerhouse speech, a turning point in the devo journey. 

So what made the occasion feel so different to the many strategy launches before it? Well, it wasn't the strategy itself. It is solid enough. It was that Burnham used it, his institutional inheritance from Greater Manchester's leaders of the last thirty years, and the growth performance that has delivered, to make his pitch for what one might call devo populism.  

There were new Mayoral Development Corporations for Atom Valley, Ashton and Stalybridge, Leigh, Bolton and Middleton, the latter to be led by none other than local lad Steve Coogan who joined with a video message of support. The Old Trafford Development Corporation is to be led by Lord (Sebastian) Coe. 

Burnham said loud and clear that he was fully behind the further expansion of the regional centre of the conurbation with more housing and jobs. But he also set his stall out around a package of measures to ensure that its growth touches every part of the conurbation. 

He stressed the key role of the MBacc, the Greater Manchester Baccalaureate in delivering skills and jobs to the young people of the city.  He pledged the trialling of free early morning travel for older and disabled people this August. 

Much of what Burnham proposes is new. Some of it has been in planning for decades. There are to be extensions to the Metrolink system, to the all night bus pilots and half price travel for 18- to 21-year-olds. 

He promised to release the city region from the grip of the housing crisis by building more social homes than are lost to right-to-buy (an easier target given looming government changes). His coup de grace was his announcement that as of 2025, Greater Manchester is starting the work to deliver a city centre underground travel system (not that it appears in the strategy). 

This is why it felt like a coming of age: a fully retail political moment. It was a throwing down of the gauntlet to his political opponents, above all to the populism of Reform. The whole launch event also served as a reminder to Ministers that social democracy was meant to be popular. 

So there was a challenge to the political centre of this country too. He had signalled it that morning with his opinion piece in the Guardian which set out a new approach to local health and welfare – one of the more compelling parts of the new national 10 Year Plan. At the strategy launch he went further.  Every time, as on Wednesday, Burnham mentions his ambitions for the MBacc or LiveWell he is challenging Whitehall which still holds the powers and funds that determine how health, skills, education and welfare work (or not). 

If there was much to cheer for the Greater Mancunians present there were unspoken challenges lurking too: hard decisions lie ahead. As research by my colleague James Gilmour shows, It is no accident that Greater Manchester is growing faster than elsewhere in the UK. 

Large scale and hardheaded investment decisions taken over decades to connect people and jobs are at the heart of Greater Manchester's success. Like Stockport's, the new  Development Corporations need to add to that legacy or risk squandering it. 

Making Greater Manchester a single labour market is a far more important priority than the promotion of one or more areas if that is at the expense of the others. Business not the public sector needs to decide where it wants to locate.  The job of the Combined Authority is to facilitate that process not to seek to control it.

The growth of Greater Manchester has always been about partnership between civic leaders and business and between both of them and central government. 

Burnham's vision is going to need both business and the Government onside if the fairness of his vision is to be fuelled by the growth necessary to deliver it. Creating a distinctive vision is one thing. The populist politics of division may have a rhetorical role at the moment. But it will take partnership to sustain growth and create shared prosperity. 

 

Is devolution coming of age? Maybe Definitely!

Mike Emmerich is founding director of Metrodynamics