Early on Thursday morning, the 44^th Premier of NSW announced, via Twitter, that he was quitting politics.

“I’m retiring from politics,” he wrote. “It's been an honour to serve you, NSW.”

He followed up with a two minute video on Facebook, before a press conference at 10am. 

Most of his parliamentary colleagues were caught on the hop. Two ministers – John Ajaka and David Elliot – had already planned press conferences for that morning.

Even Mr Baird’s new deputy leader, John Barilaro, admitted he’d found out his boss was quitting in the same way everyone else had – on social media. 

Asked whether that might be interpreted as a sign of disrespect from a man he hasn’t always seen eye to eye with, Mr Barilaro demurred. 

“That’s a matter for Mr Baird,” he deadpanned.

Indeed, it felt like after three years as Premier Mike Baird – the conviction politician, the cool dad, the man often labelled “too nice” for politics – chose his departure to offer a resounding upright middle finger to his critics. 

After all, it was his willingness to use social media to bypass the self-appointed king makers of NSW politics that in many ways preceded the events that no doubt fueled his decision to step down.

When he announced his decision to ban greyhound racing on Facebook in July, it prompted howls of outrage from Sydney’s conservative press and within his own party.

It was that policy, coupled with the unpopular council mergers and lockout laws in Sydney that formed the triumvirate of his government’s misfortunes in 2016.

And it was on greyhounds that he eventually bowed.

Forced to kiss the ring in an embarrassing backdown on an issue he’d sold as “the right thing to do”, his eventual mea culpa was made all the more humiliating by photos of him meeting with Alan Jones the day before he caved.

By using social media to announce his shock resignation, Mr Baird seemed to be saying to his critics, ‘if you’re not happy with how I do things, find someone else’.

This is a dramatic oversimplification, of course.

As he reminded us on Thursday, Mr Baird said from the beginning of his political career that he was there for a good time, not a long time.

And the revelations of the health issues facing his father, mother and sister suggest he simply has other things on his mind.

But, whatever the motivations, Mr Baird’s departure has the potential to mark the most significant shift in the political fortunes of Newcastle and the Hunter since the 2014 ICAC scandal that led to his elevation to the top job.

There’s a common narrative about Mr Baird and Newcastle that just about anyone involved in the revitalisation of the city will try to sell to you if you let them. 

In it, the government’s spending on the city – whether through the proceeds of the sale of the Port of Newcastle or the Hunter Infrastructure and Investment Fund – are all driven by Mr Baird’s apparent genuine interest in the city.

That focus, the Baird-Newcastle narrative posits, plays out against a backdrop of a parliamentary Liberal Party that on the whole doesn’t really get why the government is spending so much money in a place where no one ever votes for it. 

The general attitude – according to this narrative – ranges from bemusement to outright hostility, and is only exacerbated by the fact that most of what the government tries to do here faces broad opposition. 

For a demonstration of this in action, see Transport Minister Andrew Constance’s message to Novocastrians in April last year when he told us to “embrace it, stop being so negative” about the Newcastle Light Rail project. 

Whether you buy the narrative is up to you.

In some ways, it’s really just a nicer way of articulating Mr Constance’s message, and there’s a pretty obvious subtext to it which is ‘be grateful for what you’re getting’.

Because it’s not like Mr Baird’s investments in the city came without strings. 

It was Mr Baird who, as Treasurer, announced the sale of the Port of Newcastle in 2013.

It was that sale that funded the Newcastle Light Rail project, allowing the subsequent cutting of the heavy rail line into Newcastle.

There’s no doubt that those decisions have helped reinvigorate Newcastle, and anyone in the business community will tell you – again, just try and stop them – that the city’s resurgence has been underpinned by those investments.

But it’s equally true that only a small portion of the Port sale funds came to the Hunter, and that the sale came with a cap on container movements that ended any hope of the Port of Newcastle diversifying beyond mostly coal exports.

This is not a tension that is particular to Newcastle, either.

The kind of basic logic of the Baird government was to use major infrastructure projects – which he himself called his “hallmark” on Thursday – to sweeten the sale of assets like the Port and polls and wires, all while watching the budget cup runneth over with stamp duties from the state’s increasingly insane property market. 

It maybe explains what Mr Baird thought about Newcastle better than anything else, though. 

The Premier obviously saw economic potential in the city that wasn’t being fulfilled. Whether or not his desire to bring that potential out was based on a genuine interest in the city, or a desire to see more money flow into the state’s economy, or both, is kind of irrelevant. 

His decisions have obviously changed Newcastle, but whether you think the changes are for the better depends on what you want for Newcastle; ask 100 people what the “jewel of the Asia Pacific” looks like, you’ll get 100 answers.

The real question for Newcastle though, is whether Mr Baird’s successor – likely to be Gladys Berejiklian – will have the same vision.