The dawning realisation experienced by St Paul on the road to Damascus - the moment in which he saw the light and was changed by it - came to mind for many of us reading the Chancellor's second Mais Lecture, delivered this week.
Anyone close to Rachel Reeves in recent years will have come away with a consistent impression that while she understood the case for devolution, her overriding commitment was always to economic stability. Devolution was something she was prepared to support. Stability was something she felt she had to guarantee.
More broadly, though, the mayoral system itself has matured. What were once tentative institutions now increasingly resemble serious economic actors. They are capable of strategy, of delivery, and crucially of absorbing more responsibility.
That is what makes this speech feel so striking.
We have, of course, been here before. Reeves' first Mais Lecture, in 2024, was expansive, intellectually serious and, in its own way, bold - a speech that set out the contours of a more social democratic, investment-led state. But what followed in the budgets and fiscal events that came after was much more muted. The language of transformation gave way to the constraints of high office - perhaps more than might have been hoped.
So the question now is obvious. Is history about to repeat itself?
There are reasons - economic and political - to think not.
‘Damascene' may not, on this occasion, be too strong a word. As John Maynard Keynes is said to have put it, ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?' And the facts are changing.
Manchester is now the fastest-growing part of the British economy. It has led the way in devolution and has developed one of the most advanced settlements in the country. Alongside Liverpool and Leeds City Regions and South Yorkshire, it has helped to assemble a credible, economically coherent case for Northern Powerhouse Rail, a scheme whose logic was restated in the Chancellor's lecture. It is instructive that in the Oxford Cambridge area where devolution has yet fully to embed and prove itself, the Government's response is not devolution but the control of development corporations and further central funding.
More broadly, though, the mayoral system itself has matured. What were once tentative institutions now increasingly resemble serious economic actors. They are capable of strategy, of delivery, and crucially of absorbing more responsibility.
That is the economic and governance context into which Reeves' 2026 lecture lands.
This is not just a speech about devolution as aspiration. There is a shift: from rhetoric to delivery. Where once Reeves spoke of empowering local leaders, she is now proposing to give them a direct fiscal stake in growth through business rate retention, city investment funds, and most significantly a roadmap towards fiscal devolution, potentially including income tax.
That is a material change.
The logic underpinning it is simple but profound. Local leaders cannot be expected to drive growth if they do not share in its proceeds. Why are mayors constantly lobbying the centre for resources? The answer, of course, is that they have few of their own.
The implication of that realisation is what gives this moment its weight.
To be clear, there is still a process to be gone through. Between now and the Autumn Statement, officials in the Treasury and across Whitehall will be engaged in detailed negotiations with Mayors and city leaders. The parameters are only partially defined. The model will begin as fiscally neutral with growth incentives (and risk) layered on top.
Much remains unresolved. Which taxes, what proportions, how volatility is handled, how equalisation works, and whether the system is rolled out universally or through a set of trailblazers. Important issues, all of them.
But the process is clear, and the deadline is real. These alone are reasons for optimism.
There is, however, a second reason, one that is more political but no less important.
The scale of Reeves' announcement is perhaps only matched, in recent memory, by George Osborne's 2014 Northern Powerhouse speech. Both represent attempts by Chancellors of the Exchequer to reframe the role of place in the national economy.
For Osborne, the political context was austerity. Having withdrawn significant funding from local government, devolution offered both a compensating narrative and a mechanism for renewal. It was a way of giving power back to places that had seen much taken away.
For Reeves, the context is different but no less pressing. She is a northern MP, representing one among many constituencies whose politics are fragmenting. The pressures are not just economic but electoral. There is a need to demonstrate that growth will be felt beyond London and the South East, and that local leaders will have the tools to deliver it. For once, the politics and economics of the situation point in the same direction.
That does not mean success is assured. But for all that, something important has shifted.
This lecture represents not just a continuation of Reeves' earlier thinking, but an unexpected and welcome sharpening of it, the ambition matched by a plausible route to delivery.
Cynicism must, as ever, await the eventuality of failure. This week, perhaps more than most in recent memory, there is a genuine prospect of change, of a system in which local leaders are empowered to play a fuller role in driving economic growth and social renewal.
If this is a Damascene moment, it will not be because of what was said this week, but because of what is done between now and the Autumn Statement. It is enough to make you want to pray.
Mike Emmerich is a Founding Director at Metro Dynamics and author of a forthcoming biography of Sir Howard Bernstein
