Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales need powerful, directly-elected ‘metro mayors’, as in England.

Baroness Sue Gray, a former senior civil servant in Stormont and Whitehall, made this proposal at an SDLP event last week.

“I do fear for Stormont, and I do think that people here deserve action and decisions,” she added, suggesting metro mayors would be particularly important in Northern Ireland to bypass dysfunctional devolution.

Labour has been proposing metro mayors for Scotland and Wales since Gordon Brown’s report on constitutional reform in 2022.

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The party carefully describes it as “double devolution”, to reassure the Scottish and Welsh governments it is not just a power grab. A suspicious SNP is unconvinced.

The report also proposes more metro mayors across England to create a form of English devolution matching that around the rest of the UK.

Andy Burnham is a fan of the Brown report – as mayor of Manchester he considers himself the epitome of the model’s success. He has already said his government will prioritise rebalancing devolution around the UK.

Baroness Gray was Keir Starmer’s chief of staff and has been advising Mr Burnham on his transition to Downing Street, so she was musing on a notion that may soon be floating around at the top of........

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