Burnham urges Craig to go further as Farage spots the tension in Labour's devolution plan

Andy Burnham has urged his successor Bev Craig to "go further and do more" after her by-election win in Greater Manchester, the Mirror reports. The BBC says the new mayor's powers "will change lives".

But Nigel Farage has identified what he calls a "huge flaw" in Labour's devolution offer, the Express reports - saying the government's plan is the "opposite" of what Burnham wants. The Mirror notes Craig's victory shows "Burnham's Makerfield gamble paid out in full", referring to the seat selection that allowed her candidacy.

The tension is structural. Burnham has spent years arguing for fiscal devolution - the power to raise and spend money locally, not simply administer grants from Whitehall. That requires tax-varying powers, which successive Chancellors have resisted because they fragment the national tax base and complicate Treasury arithmetic. Farage's critique appears to rest on this gap: that Labour's devolution rhetoric promises autonomy while the machinery still runs through the centre.

The vocabulary matters here. "Devolution" entered British constitutional usage via the Scotland Act 1998, itself drawing on older Commonwealth precedent. But the word does political work - it sounds like a transfer of power when the practical question is which powers and on what terms. Craig now holds an elected office with a mandate to press the case, but the Treasury holds the chequebook.

What to watch: whether Craig uses her first budget cycle to test the limits of the current settlement, and whether Burnham's departure to Westminster makes him an advocate or a brake on the fiscal devolution he once championed.