New Delhi, July 24 -- Number 10 North, a Manchester-based policy hub Burnham describes as the foundation for the most ambitious restructuring of British governance in a generation.

"Rhetoric alone will not cut it," Swinney said.

The bluntness of that response, delivered before Burnham's administration has even held a second cabinet meeting, captures both the promise and the risk of Number 10 North. As a statement of intent, relocating devolution and local growth policy functions from the housing ministry and Treasury into a Manchester headquarters at Heron House is genuinely unprecedented. As a policy, it has transferred not a single pound of additional spending power to the regions it is meant to empower.

The written ministerial state...