As the government moves to put directly-elected mayors back on the agenda, Michael Kenny looks at the benefits of strong leadership
Elected mayors have moved back into the political limelight. Boris Johnson’s victory in London may have become one of the defining moments in the fortunes of the Brown government. Just as importantly, both the issues in the campaign and the two main candidates captivated Londoners and the national media alike.
Even before the London election, there were clear indications that momentum was gathering in both of the main parties behind the idea of introducing more mayors into England’s cities. The CLG’s forthcoming White Paper will be watched with interest by supporters of the idea of elected mayors. Many believe that it represents an important opportunity for Gordon Brown to return to some of the themes through which he set out to define his time in office in his short-lived honeymoon last year - the generation of civic pride and the pursuit of political reform.
More generally, stakeholders throughout the world of local government have been moving to the view that elected mayors could represent the catalyst needed to instigate the process of wresting power from Whitehall and passing it back to local government. It is now a truism in Westminster that the complex challenges of public service delivery are not best handled by bureaucrats sitting in London. But neither Labour nor the Tories have as yet developed a serious strategic plan to delegate power to the localities. Among the various reasons for this hesitation are a lingering (and unjustified) prejudice about the calibre of political leadership in local authorities and a concern about the declining sense of interest that people feel towards local politics.
The introduction of more directly elected leaders of councils offers a viable response to these concerns. The evidence supplied by the small pool of mayors elected since 2001 is largely encouraging. The introduction of this office has nearly always coincided with an improvement in councils’ performance. Hackney is perhaps the most dramatic example of a turn-around in fortunes under an elected mayor. More generally, every mayoral authority has either consolidated or improved its score in the CPA. Elected mayors are far better known by their electorates than council leaders. A poll conducted in 2003 found that, on average, 57% of voters in mayoral areas recognised the name of their leader, compared with 25% average recognition for non-elected leaders. Many mayors hold open surgeries, appear on phone-ins and respond by email to comments from their local constituents. Because they are not reliant for support on local party groups they are typically responsive to the concerns of local people and prepared to call councils to account. Evidence shows that they tend to become beacons for the places they represent, and are generally more focused upon facilitating partnerships and balancing different interests than pursuing narrow party interests.
Suspicion towards directly elected mayors remains entrenched in some quarters. Many fear that town halls would be handed over to celebrities or rich local business people, or even joke candidates. But the evidence to date does not support such worries. While he may indeed be a celebrity of sorts, Boris won by re-packaging himself as a serious political figure with a policy agenda tailored to the priorities of Londoners. Stuart Drummond from Hartlepool, who infamously wore a monkey costume during the town’s mayoral campaign, is often cited as an exemplar of dangers of electing council leaders. Yet few have bothered to find out what he has been like as mayor. In fact, he threw away his costume just prior to his election and turned into a capable and effective local leader. He was re-elected with an increased majority and has overseen a marked improvement in the performance of his council.
Politicians should examine whether their fears about this model of political leadership are justified. The direct election of council leaders makes politics exciting and less predictable, and offers all the main parties the chance to have an influence in places where they have historically performed poorly. Mayors should of course be accountable for their policies to councillors as well as to their electorates, and we need to make sure that there are checks and balances on their exercising of power. But local government desperately needs strengthened leadership mechanisms coupled with a clearer sense of democratic accountability.
Fewer people than ever are willing to vote in local elections, and many of us are turned off by the complex system of different types of local authority, and the various models of political leader that councils have. We need a simplified and more transparent type of leadership in local politics so that we all know where the buck stops. People who don’t like what their elected mayor is doing can vote them out after four years. Those of us who don’t like what our council leader is doing may not have the same opportunity.
The real democratic question that needs to be asked about elected mayors is: why so few? Why should London have this kind of contest and the kind of high-profile leadership it generates, while Birmingham, Manchester and Sheffield do not? When will we have a government at Westminster that has the courage to steer away from the local referendum device that has played into the hands of sceptical councillors and proved a major obstacle to the introduction of more directly elected leaders in local government?
If government is reluctant to introduce mayors in one big bang, then it could adopt a more cautious approach, trialling the transfer of authority to accountable executive leaders in a few areas and rewarding cities willing to choose this leadership model with the receipt of additional powers over, say, policing.
The creation of stronger and more visible leaders with the mandates to negotiate hard with the centre for their city represents an important and viable route to taking powers from anonymous civil servants and giving them to localities. There is every chance too that local democracy would be a major beneficiary of such a shift. People are much more likely to bother to vote and get more interested in local politics, if they are choosing leaders with a suite of meaningful powers at their disposal.
Michael Kenny is a Professor of Politics at Sheffield University, and Visiting Research Fellow at ippr.
