England's northern towns need real power

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Nothing like "Putin". Thatcher was a major centralizer of power, and the country hasn't recovered

completely. London (ie the city, not the Westminster parliament or civil service Whitehall) got its power back, and as Mason says, it's doing better. Devolution to Scotland and Wales has helped (Northern Ireland is a special case).

But cities (or large towns like Wigan - the "tiny village" has a population of 100,000, and the borough 300,000) can have very little control over all sorts of things that most countries do have local control of - and councils and areas often just get played off one another in a game of "chase the central government grant for implementing the latest favoured way of doing something", because their standard budgets are so restricted.