Should Andy Burnham's Greater Manchester model be used as a blueprint for national government?

Greater Manchester's model fell at the final hurdle, losing 12-11 in a chamber too small and too evenly split to call a mandate either way. A four-point gap on a 23-vote turnout is a coin toss dressed up as a result, and it shows in almost every cross-section of the data.

The one pattern with any shape is generational: younger-middle voters, 25-44, tilted toward Burnham's blueprint, with the 35-44 group backing it 3 to 1, while the 45-64 bracket turned against it, 55-64 voting 3 to 1 no. It is the kind of age fracture that recalls the Brexit divide in reverse — here it is the older cohort more sceptical of handing power away from the centre, not less.

Gender offered no clarity at all: men split 8-9, women exactly 3-3, both a coin's width from parity. On a question that goes to the heart of the devolution argument — Whitehall control versus regional autonomy on housing and spending — the platform's verdict is less a rejection of the Manchester model than a shrug that happened to fall on the no side.

A four-point loss, on this evidence, is barely a loss at all.