It is quite easy to talk yourself into feeling that Britain is irredeemably broken. No less a social commentator than Jeremy Clarkson averred in last weekend’s Sunday Times that we live in “a country where the roads look like they’ve been attacked by badgers, the police are useless, the taxes are ridiculous, the benefits are worse, the exhibits in every art gallery are covered in soup”. Which is, of course, one way of looking at it.

The ongoing scourge of potholes notwithstanding, I have been looking at it a slightly different way this week, and feeling rather more optimistic about our nation’s prospects. Clarkson went to Miami to discover a city that’s prosperous and dynamic and forward-looking. I went to Manchester.

England’s second city has undergone an astounding transformation since the turn of the century, fuelled by the expansion in high-tech, digital, life sciences and media businesses, and since 2015 its economy has grown by more than 3 per cent a year, twice the national average.

And everywhere are the signs of civic confidence: an integrated transport system that is a model for urban living; the once-dilapidated warehouses, mills and factories that have become fancy (and well-populated); canal-side apartment blocks; the regeneration of formerly unfashionable areas of central Manchester; the smart restaurants, cafés and wine bars; the cultural vibrancy; and a skyline that is genuinely impressive, with the proliferation of cranes that speak of a city on the up, in more sense than one.

What is now styled as the city’s Northern Quarter, where a two-bedroom wharfside apartment might cost £500,000, used to be part of a city district called Ancoats. It was the cradle of “Cottonopolis” (Manchester’s nickname in the Industrial Revolution) and was known for its textile mills, terraced streets that became some of the worst slums in Britain, and abnormally high mortality rates.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon, walking through what was once a byword in post-industrial dereliction, along the towpath of the Ashton Canal, past throngs of young people eating al fresco, and in the shadow of residential developments called Flint Glass Wharf or Gramercy House or Potato Wharf, it was difficult to believe that we were in Manchester and not Amsterdam or New York.

It illustrates what can be achieved in the most unpromising of inner-city districts, but the colonisation of this post-industrial landscape with young professionals and branches of Gail’s tells only part of the story. The city’s regeneration may have been built from the ruins of the IRA bomb in 1996, propelled by the 2002 Commonwealth Games and secured by the relocation of parts of the BBC in 2011, but at the heart of its economic resurgence has been an enduring investment in education and research (a significant pointer for cities everywhere).

The two universities – Manchester and Manchester Metropolitan – enrol more students than any other city outside London, and are genuinely important institutions in the metro ecosystem. They have high retention rates, with 76.3 per cent of graduates staying in the Manchester area for work, making it second only to London the UK for retaining talent. This provides a steady flow of graduates to feed into the city’s growing biomedical, digital, and financial services sector, and ensures that businesses wanting to invest in Manchester have a ready-made, educated pool of young talent.

Like all cities of comparable size, Manchester has its share of inner-city problems, and someone visiting Moss Side, Wythenshawe or Gorton, for example, would not immediately think they were at the cutting edge of urban regeneration. But there is a perceptible confidence around the city, personified by Andy Burnham, the Mayor, who has added social purpose (policies that ensure financial growth benefits all parts of the city) and civic responsibility (his handling of issues around the attack on Manchester Arena in 2017 was exemplary) to the council’s urban investment strategy.

More than anything, however, I felt a sense of pride as I walked through Manchester’s rejuvenated and refreshed streets last weekend. I have written in these pages previously that I am a Mancunian first and an Englishman second, and the fact that the city of my birth is leading the way in economic growth in the UK, in the way it has done previously in terms of industrial development, scientific discovery, sporting achievement and music, makes me very happy.

So, to those of a Clarksonian bent, and to those who believe Britain is a basket case, go to the North West, to Britain’s fastest growing city.

It may not be an economic miracle, you may still find streets full of potholes, and there’s no exemption from inheritance tax. But the renewal of Manchester should be enough to make you feel optimistic about our nation’s future.

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