“They just thought it was a bunch of cocky Mancunians talking bullshit,” says Jim O’Neill, the former Treasury minister and Goldman Sachs chief economist. “But the more time goes on and the more the evidence becomes clear, they’re like, ‘Oh my God.’”O’Neill is talking about Greater Manchester, whose economy has been growing at twice the UK’s national rate. It’s attracted the highest foreign direct investment outside the capital, drawing global companies like IBM, Booking.com, Klarna, Bosch, Roku