There is always a sense of déjà vu on the subject of unitary local government whenever a new secretary of state is appointed. The ministerial mantra runs generally like this: ‘We like unitary government but we won't impose it since it's up to localities, because while we like counties as they're large, we also like districts as they're small. Furthermore, we have long memories of the last reorganisation in the 1990s and have no intention of going through that horror again.'

There are of course variations. Eric Pickles, a veteran in the sector, scrapped the last stage of Labour's unitary programme when he became secretary of state in 2010 and was always fond of districts. The new communities secretary, Sajid Javid, only became an MP in 2010 and therefore carries less historic baggage than Mr Pickles. When districts and counties were slugging it out with each other in the early 1990s, Mr Javid was a rising star in banking. I imagine that this successful son of a bus driver who became the youngest vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank at the age of 25, might find the arcane squabbles between different tiers of local government a tiresome distraction to achieving his goal of ‘an economy that works for all'.