On the road to Downing Street, Andy Burnham promised a new dawn for Britain’s towns and high streets.

For too long places outside the big cities had been “forgotten or written off”, he argued after the Makerfield byelection. To help towns like those in his constituency, he said his government would make sure that the places Westminster had neglected would now get fairness.

Four times more people live in Britain’s towns than in cities. Since the turn of the millennium, big cities and more prosperous towns have grown significantly faster than weaker local economies. In Manchester, the population rose by almost a third , amid a renaissance in Cottonopolis that its former mayor capitalised on before entering No 10.

In sharp contrast, towns have been growing more slowly than cities on average, and are ageing faster as well.…