The Guardian view on Labour’s devolution plans: beyond ‘levelling up’ | Editorial

Sir Keir Starmer’s No 10 meeting with metro mayors sent the right message. But big challenges loomOver the years, England’s town halls have become used to being treated with a mixture of hostility, condescension and neglect. During the late 1980s, writing at the height of Margaret Thatcher’s ideological assault on leftwing councils, the political scientist Andrew Gamble warned that her centralising tendencies could pave the way to “the eventual abolition of local governme