At an impromptu press conference outside Manchester Town Hall on October 15 2021, Andy Burnham delivered one of the defining speeches of his career. Wearing his reading glasses, and dressed casually in a blue-grey shirt, no tie – and the city’s essential uniform, the cagoule – the Manchester Mayor’s anger and indignation were palpable. Greater Manchester, he said, would not be “the sacrificial lamb for an ill-thought-through Downing Street policy which doesn’t make sense in the real world ”. He