Incoming governments like to rebrand their predecessor's initiatives like cats spraying on a carpet to leave their mark. So out went Total Place when the coalition took power in 2010, only to resurface as community budgets. Pilots and pathfinders, so redolent of New Labour, became prototypes.

But nowhere is this cat-spraying more prevalent than in English regional policy. Governments going back to the 1960s ever since Britain's industrial base began its long process of decline have attempted to rebalance the economy between London and the English provinces by a string of initiatives which rarely outlast the government that created them. In the 1980s it was Heseltine's urban development corporations, whose legacy of out of town sheds and housing estates can still be seen in the West Midlands, North East and elsewhere. When UDCs fell out of fashion in the 1990s they were succeeded by regional development agencies in the 2000s. When these in turn were scrapped by the coalition in 2010 regions became the word that dare not be mentioned within earshot of Eric Pickles. Instead we had core cities, the Northern Powerhouse, the Midlands Engine and even the Northern Powerhouse Gateway. Now it looks like we might be in for another change of names with a new ministerial line-up.