What a difference a week makes. Barely a week after an expectant nation wondered what form of patched-together administration might eventually emerge from the General Election, a triumphant chancellor George Osborne returned to Manchester to set the pace for the Conservative majority government’s Northern Powerhouse agenda.

The chancellor’s lighting strike, which forced Manchester City Council leader Sir Richard Leese to miss the Core Cities mini-summit, (see pages 14-15 of The MJ 21 May 2015), was used to confirm that a City Devolution Bill enabling a radical new model of urban government would form a central part of the Government’s Queen’s Speech on 27 May.

And, in a signal of his serious intent, Mr Osborne also announced that former Goldman Sachs chief economist Jim O’Neill, who coined the phrase ‘BRICS’ to define the emerging global economies of Brazil, Russia, China and South Africa and chaired the RSA’s City Growth commission – would be made a peer and drive the Northern Powerhouse agenda as commercial secretary to the Treasury.