IF nothing else, Warrington aligning itself with Chester and Greater Cheshire means my new catchphrase – Deva-lution – can get an airing.

Because for the life of me, and all the Berocca in the cupboard, I couldn’t make WBC cosying up with Liverpool sound even remotely trite.

The Prime Minister is mostly to blame with her come-hither Brexit timetable talk. As you know this column has steadfastly touched upon our departure from the European Union only when strictly necessary (or during a particularly slow week).

But if our leather-trousered leader is prepared to countenance a day when Brexit will be a term of the past, rather than a never-ending spectre foreshadowing all our lives, maybe it’s time for new beginnings for everyone.

Terry O’Neill and this corner of the Guardian are rarely on the same page but entrusting the borough’s fate to ‘Uncle’ Joe Anderson and his Scouse buddies appeared foolhardy.

If anyone from Halton or St Helens strongly disagrees with this completely partisan analysis, my e-mail should be available somewhere or other. You can also tweet my Guardian account, but I wouldn’t advise it, as blunt ignorance often offends.

Was the promise of support in creating Cheshire’s second city enough to swing the debate? Warrington was outstripping Chester in the economic and population stakes even before the Cheshire county split in 1998 so you would hope the New Town to New City bandwagon would easily get the chequered flag some day.

I’m not naïve enough to believe getting into bed with some of the true-blue enclaves of Cheshire might not be without its perils. But hopefully the hard edges of reality, in an increasingly competitive municipal world, will counterbalance any party political posturing.

Oh – for the pedants who seem to dog Podium’s every footstep – Deva is the Latin name for Chester. In the same era Warrington, from its origins as a Roman crossing on the Mersey at Wilderspool, was Verinatum, which always seemed far classier than its modern-day equivalent.

Though equally difficult to generate a snappy buzzword from.

  •  Leaving aside the terminally tiresome ‘remain’ and ‘leave’ camp’s entreaties, there’s always one forum which Podium has felt a little queasy in supporting, vis-à-vis our European cousins.

And this has been amply demonstrated by the strange case of former Culcheth High student Ian Griffin, who has been released from a six-year prison sentence, for the murder of his fiancée, after 24 months.

Griffin, who was said to have left his lover with 100 separate injuries, was initially given 20 years for the killing.

This was reduced to six years on appeal – now we hear he is at liberty after a French court ordered his release in a closed session last October.

The case evokes memories of another north west murder, which saw ex-tree surgeon Robert Lund convicted on at least three separate occasions for the 1999 murder of his wife Evelyn. She became known as the Lady in the Lake after her remains were found in Lake Bancalie in 2001.

Former colleagues of mine were summoned to south-western France, as trial witnesses for the third hearing, after Lund took them to the exact spot where Evelyn’s body was recovered, despite claiming never to have been there before.

Through the French media, following his eventual release in 2013, he was still talking about another potential appeal, thankfully never proceeded with.

Despite two decades of first-hand experience of our adversarial court system, and grave reservations about juries at times, this has always been one sphere where closer integration should be viewed with total disdain.