Is local government justified in its abiding sense that it is always the bridesmaid, never the bride, in relation to Westminster? This sense of victimhood can only have been deepened by the call for a snap General Election, timed for barely a month after the long-scheduled local elections.

But this shouldn't detract from the significant fact that today voters across six areas of England – in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, Tees Valley, West Midlands and the West of England – will be choosing the first generation of directly-elected combined authority mayors.