The paper considers the notion that innovation in territorial governance is associated with a set of core neoliberal ideas about local economic development which have come to constitute a new and pervasive consensus. Through a case study of attempts to construct city-regional institutions in Manchester, England, over a period of 25 years, it attempts to track the themes that have underpinned the development of a local politics of economic development. The paper considers the extent to which evolution of city-regional institutions and policy accord to wider ideas about post-political forms of governance and the erosion of democracy in cities. It concludes by considering the degree to which this experience is representative of a wider orthodoxy in the governance of local economic development.