take back control?

Partnership will take a closer look at fiscal devolution – both the opportunities and challenges it raises. Clearly, it would see reductions to what the Treasury itself receives, and we need the right stabilisers in place for areas with the lowest tax revenues.

“After all, if ultimately we want to become less reliant on Whitehall, we must be able to pay our own way.

“I want to make the case for devolution as a transformative economic policy, as well as a path to genuine political reform, with metro mayors helping reconnect people to power.

“Which brings me back to Brexit. When the UK voted to leave the European Union in 2016, it went much deeper than just a disdain or distrust of Brussels, stoked by the money of those like the businessman Paul Sykes. It was about a feeling of powerlessness which had built up over decades, of being ignored by the powers that be who think they know better. “Post-Brexit, that feeling hasn’t gone away, not least because the promises made by those like Johnson turned out to be ones he himself couldn’t keep.

“If we want to heal divisions, we need to empower communities and reconnect them to a sense of shared destiny, over which they can have a proper say. People must feel able to change their destiny, rather than just accept it.

“This is the only way to fix our broken political system and truly ‘take back control’.”