The Heseltine report

The FT has my reaction to the Heseltine report (£). There's good and bad in there, but on the central recommendations around decentralisation I admit to being puzzled. As I explain in the piece: 'there is a tension, which is never resolved, about whether Mr Heseltine calls for the devolution or the decentralisation of decision making. Should cities be free to tax and spend how they like or are they instead to act as localised delivery merchants for some grand central government strategy conceived and developed in Whitehall?'