Gary's views

Gary's weekly views

Each week an article by Gary has appeared in the Plympton Plymstock and Ivybridge News in South West Devon. The articles are published here

A MAYOR FOR PLYMOUTH

A well-known think-tank published a report last week suggesting that directly elected mayors with full executive powers should run all of the major cities in the UK.

This is not party policy, and I may get in trouble for saying so, but I totally agree, and have thought so for some time. Not the absurd recipe for confusion we have at the moment in London and Torbay and other places, where the elected mayor has very limited powers and spends most of his life locked in hand to hand fighting with the elected councillors. No, I mean the full-blown American and French style I’m-in-charge-and-don’t-you-forget-it-style leadership.
(Incidentally, I’m no lover of Ken Livingstone, but I think the decision by the local government watchdog to suspend him for 4 weeks because he made an unfortunate remark is outrageous).

What are the advantages of directly elected mayors? First of all clear leadership and accountability. You elect a person to do a job for 4 years; everybody knows whose in charge, the buck clearly stops on his or her desk and if they don’t do a good job, there is no-one else to blame and the electorate can choose another. Everybody would know who was ultimately in charge of schools, regeneration, planning and all city services, obviously working through and overseeing the sector heads of each department. Candidates standing for election would set out their stall, the people would decide and they could be held to account.

Second, it is a very good way of attracting into public life high quality people who would be very good at running something but not the least bit interested in party politics. The leadership of a city like Plymouth could be carried out after a successful career in business, or the public or voluntary sector; in short the right person from whatever background.

Why just cities? A city is a readily identifiable area with a clear sense of coherence, capable of being run as a single entity. It is not possible to say that about some of our more rural areas. To qualify, it would have to be of a certain size, maybe at least 200,000 people, big enough to run all the main services.

The thought of yet another review of local government horrifies me, but introducing directly elected mayors in all major UK cities seems to me to a reform that could have long-term benefits for the British people.

posted by Nigel on Saturday, March 11, 2006