“…The common thread to these approaches is that they frame the North within a centripetal narrative according to which Whitehall 'knows best' how to address the North's problems -leading to devolution policies negotiated mainly between national and local elites, and involving feeble powers, modest budgets, vast liabilities and the maintenance of substantial control from the centre (Giovannini, 2016: 592;Deas, 2014). Thus, devolution in the North of England has followed a characteristically bewildering and underwhelming path -leading to complexity, experimentation, fragmentation and incoherence with largely negative implications for territorial equity and justice (Pike and Tomaney, 2009), as well as for local politics and democracy (Tomaney, 2016;Prosser et al, 2017).…”