Elected mayors are another big idea gone badly wrong
Here is a column about politics. On the latest research figures which guide BBC programming, that's 30% of you gone already. Constitutional politics. Bang goes another 20%. Local politics. Is there anybody still out there, mother? Certainly nobody under the age of 30, son. They think Have I Got News For You is pretty dense stuff. Well, never mind.
The place where I live - population upwards of 230,000 - is having a referendum this week. Are we Middlesbrough or Brighton? Hartlepool or Sedgefield? Do we or don't we want an elected mayor? It used to be an issue at the cutting edge of New Labour's agenda. It arrives now, in Southwark, trailing clouds of the most perfect boredom, the most profound apathy.
Few people I've talked to even know that the vote is coming. The debate, if there is one, is buried somewhere in the pre-Christmas post. Lewisham, just down the road, chose (narrowly) to have an elected mayor last autumn with a turnout of 18%. Anything they can do, we can do still more incompetently. Yet another big idea trails into the sands.
It didn't feel like that in the beginning. It felt like a good wheeze from a new Blair government full of good wheezes. We knew what Giuliani had done for New York. We knew what Maragall had done for Barcelona and Chirac for Paris. Why did Britain - virtually alone in the western world - have to plod behind with faceless, amorphous local governance? Let's start in London, we thought, and then move on: to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds. Even the forces of opposition to the idea looked promising - an almost precise definition of old, old Labour, hanging on to their fixes and smoke-filled rooms. Elected mayors felt like the future waiting to happen.
But that was then, and this is now. What's gone wrong?
London and Livingstone to start with. London was where the supposed revolution began and London is disillusion squared. First, with fatal control freakery, No 10 tried to dictate who should get the job. Then the job itself turned out to be so infinitely strategic, so utterly devoid of power, that it seemed to make no difference. Save the tube? Not if Gordon didn't want to. Bring in road pricing? Not if Stephen Byers opted for delay. Ken hasn't made a difference, probably because Ken can't make a difference.
But penny plain elected mayors, of course, could make a difference. They'll have what Livingstone lacks: real clout. Anything that councils do now, they - from next May - will be able to do for themselves with precious little let or hindrance. No more hung administrations failing to take decisions. No more dragging back and forth from committee to committee. If the mayor and his hand-picked team want to achieve something, they can just get on with it - and councillors, making speeches, passing motions, will have nil ability to call them to account. A Question Time audience playing grumpy groundlings.
Does that scenario, perhaps, sound familiar? Absolutely. It's the Blair formula for national government given a local spin. The great leader in his bunker, surrounded by top advisers, aides and marketeers. The parliament down the road with nothing to do. A few ministers drifting across the surface of the body politic. We have been there, done that. We know it's no miracle cure. We also know that it's Blairism without Blair - or worse, Blairism in which the founding father has lost interest.
There ought, five years down the track, to be a pattern emerging. We ought to have a feeling for how local, regional and devolved government might fit with what Whitehall and Westminster want to do next. If there was that sense, that strategic sense, then elected mayors might march forward as part of the package. But no such structure exists, either in embryo or the mind's eye. English regional assemblies have faded from the agenda. Reform of the Lords has become a gibbering joke. Elec toral reform is as cold as Charlie Kennedy's porridge, and elected mayors are mere spots on the map, a movement without momentum, a measles of mayoralty.
They don't banish apathy. Hartlepool, voting yes in October, had a 31% turnout. Brighton, voting no, had 31.6%. The sparks of enthusiasm fail to fly. They lack any feeling of inevitability while the big cities sit to one side. There is no logic to, say, a London where, under Ken's umbrella, a couple of boroughs have whizzy mayors and the rest have none. There is no hint of a system. The case to be made for them is as incoherent and changeable as the last great (cancelled) NHS upheaval.
Elected mayors aren't a panacea for progress. For every Fiorello La Guardia, Tom Bradley or Giuliani, there is always a William H Thompson, a Jimmy Walker, a Sam Yorty. Cliques and cronies and corruption go together. More than 50 former American mayors (on the last Washington Post count) are presently behind bars. The smaller the smoke-filled room, the dirtier the dealings.
Nor, and this is a particular blight for Southwark and Lewisham, do we even have the most basic defence against abuse: a dedicated local media. Borough politics are too fiddling and trivial for the Evening Standard most of the time: it doesn't monitor and invigilate what goes on in the council chambers. But neither do the local weeklies and bi-weeklies quite fit that bill as their circulation zones swill over borough boundaries. There is no radio or TV station primed to pick up the challenge. The new mayor of Southwark or Lewisham would have nothing to fear, day by day, from a free but distracted press.
Who, in any case, will these new guys be? Mostly, looking round, the same old guys in changed clothing - ex-council leaders come back from oblivion or Millbank to reclaim their inheritance at a substantially increased salary. It doesn't wash. It wasn't what we hoped for or were promised. And the kernel of the argument grows much larger when you fit it into the Blair kaleidoscope.
Elected mayors - in France, Spain, the US - can be dynamic forces for good. They can, sometimes, make a difference if they have the necessary power and independence. The job can be a terrific one: maybe, Rudy would add, the second-best in America. It is not a stepping stone to some other political niche. It is fulfilment in itself, what men and women of talent set out to be.
We could have had some of that if New Labour had wanted it. Instead we have only spatchcockery and a rash of referendums promising nothing. It's a sad shame, but at least it helps you make up your mind. Voting no this Thursday isn't embracing the status quo. Voting no is voting for something better.
p.preston@guardian.co.uk
The place where I live - population upwards of 230,000 - is having a referendum this week. Are we Middlesbrough or Brighton? Hartlepool or Sedgefield? Do we or don't we want an elected mayor? It used to be an issue at the cutting edge of New Labour's agenda. It arrives now, in Southwark, trailing clouds of the most perfect boredom, the most profound apathy.
Few people I've talked to even know that the vote is coming. The debate, if there is one, is buried somewhere in the pre-Christmas post. Lewisham, just down the road, chose (narrowly) to have an elected mayor last autumn with a turnout of 18%. Anything they can do, we can do still more incompetently. Yet another big idea trails into the sands.
It didn't feel like that in the beginning. It felt like a good wheeze from a new Blair government full of good wheezes. We knew what Giuliani had done for New York. We knew what Maragall had done for Barcelona and Chirac for Paris. Why did Britain - virtually alone in the western world - have to plod behind with faceless, amorphous local governance? Let's start in London, we thought, and then move on: to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds. Even the forces of opposition to the idea looked promising - an almost precise definition of old, old Labour, hanging on to their fixes and smoke-filled rooms. Elected mayors felt like the future waiting to happen.
But that was then, and this is now. What's gone wrong?
London and Livingstone to start with. London was where the supposed revolution began and London is disillusion squared. First, with fatal control freakery, No 10 tried to dictate who should get the job. Then the job itself turned out to be so infinitely strategic, so utterly devoid of power, that it seemed to make no difference. Save the tube? Not if Gordon didn't want to. Bring in road pricing? Not if Stephen Byers opted for delay. Ken hasn't made a difference, probably because Ken can't make a difference.
But penny plain elected mayors, of course, could make a difference. They'll have what Livingstone lacks: real clout. Anything that councils do now, they - from next May - will be able to do for themselves with precious little let or hindrance. No more hung administrations failing to take decisions. No more dragging back and forth from committee to committee. If the mayor and his hand-picked team want to achieve something, they can just get on with it - and councillors, making speeches, passing motions, will have nil ability to call them to account. A Question Time audience playing grumpy groundlings.
Does that scenario, perhaps, sound familiar? Absolutely. It's the Blair formula for national government given a local spin. The great leader in his bunker, surrounded by top advisers, aides and marketeers. The parliament down the road with nothing to do. A few ministers drifting across the surface of the body politic. We have been there, done that. We know it's no miracle cure. We also know that it's Blairism without Blair - or worse, Blairism in which the founding father has lost interest.
There ought, five years down the track, to be a pattern emerging. We ought to have a feeling for how local, regional and devolved government might fit with what Whitehall and Westminster want to do next. If there was that sense, that strategic sense, then elected mayors might march forward as part of the package. But no such structure exists, either in embryo or the mind's eye. English regional assemblies have faded from the agenda. Reform of the Lords has become a gibbering joke. Elec toral reform is as cold as Charlie Kennedy's porridge, and elected mayors are mere spots on the map, a movement without momentum, a measles of mayoralty.
They don't banish apathy. Hartlepool, voting yes in October, had a 31% turnout. Brighton, voting no, had 31.6%. The sparks of enthusiasm fail to fly. They lack any feeling of inevitability while the big cities sit to one side. There is no logic to, say, a London where, under Ken's umbrella, a couple of boroughs have whizzy mayors and the rest have none. There is no hint of a system. The case to be made for them is as incoherent and changeable as the last great (cancelled) NHS upheaval.
Elected mayors aren't a panacea for progress. For every Fiorello La Guardia, Tom Bradley or Giuliani, there is always a William H Thompson, a Jimmy Walker, a Sam Yorty. Cliques and cronies and corruption go together. More than 50 former American mayors (on the last Washington Post count) are presently behind bars. The smaller the smoke-filled room, the dirtier the dealings.
Nor, and this is a particular blight for Southwark and Lewisham, do we even have the most basic defence against abuse: a dedicated local media. Borough politics are too fiddling and trivial for the Evening Standard most of the time: it doesn't monitor and invigilate what goes on in the council chambers. But neither do the local weeklies and bi-weeklies quite fit that bill as their circulation zones swill over borough boundaries. There is no radio or TV station primed to pick up the challenge. The new mayor of Southwark or Lewisham would have nothing to fear, day by day, from a free but distracted press.
Who, in any case, will these new guys be? Mostly, looking round, the same old guys in changed clothing - ex-council leaders come back from oblivion or Millbank to reclaim their inheritance at a substantially increased salary. It doesn't wash. It wasn't what we hoped for or were promised. And the kernel of the argument grows much larger when you fit it into the Blair kaleidoscope.
Elected mayors - in France, Spain, the US - can be dynamic forces for good. They can, sometimes, make a difference if they have the necessary power and independence. The job can be a terrific one: maybe, Rudy would add, the second-best in America. It is not a stepping stone to some other political niche. It is fulfilment in itself, what men and women of talent set out to be.
We could have had some of that if New Labour had wanted it. Instead we have only spatchcockery and a rash of referendums promising nothing. It's a sad shame, but at least it helps you make up your mind. Voting no this Thursday isn't embracing the status quo. Voting no is voting for something better.
p.preston@guardian.co.uk
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