The question was put "A question: do I infer correctly from this that
Mayors in the UK are not currently elected? If so, how are they selected,
and to whom are they accountable? I presume there is some democratic
representation at the civic level?"
It's late at night, so this might get a bit garbled in places, but here
goes:
In the context of UK local governance it is important to put out of your
mind the personality obsession of "big men" (sic) that dominates Canadian
and US local politics. At least, with some notable exceptions such as
Livingstone with the late Greater London Council, until recently.
Many of us with considerable practical experience of local politics reckon
the lack of personalisation as a structural part of the local elected body
is a more democratic form than the trivialisation and image-based politics
that mayoral systems often/usually seem to promote.
The UK system, with minor differences between England and Wales and the
Scottish that are unimportant in this regard, is more collective.
Councillors are elected, usually 3 to a ward, on an annual rolling basis
in the "shires" (that is for local authorities outside of the big
metropolitan centres such as London) or in other words one each year, so
that a councillor stands for 3 years before needing re-election.
Metropolitan authorities have big bang elections triennially.
>From the body of the councillors a Leader of the Council is elected by the
representatives on an annual basis. This is usually the leader of the
majority party, also elected annually and capable of being deposed at any
time, and hence removed from Council Leadership. Saying the leader is the
first amongst equals is stretching it a bit, but you have the idea. The
Mayor is not directly elected as a specific post by the electorate.
The Mayoralty is an honorary and symbolic post, again chosen by the
Councillors on an annual basis, and when it works well confers recognition
upon a senior councillor, often nearing the end of their service/who has
stepped down to the "backbenches" who has given genuine service. I have
often seen good councillors honoured who have been members of the Party
which is not in the majority, and it can be one of the few occassions when
people will look beyond party differences and assess the quality of that
persons committment as a local representative, but to be frank this has
been in decline over recent years and place seeking has risen. (There is a
genuine tendency to distinguish "party" politics from elements of council
work in the UK. You often find Labour, Liberal and Tory councillors
working together on individual casework for electorate members with
problems, a committment to cooperate in the large amount of casework which
is only tangentially "political", at least on the surface. Don't get
idealistic about this tendency, plenty of opportunities arise for party
sniping, but it still exists even in the 1990s in some areas, although in
dangerous decline, a decline I fear will be hastened by Image Politics).
Often, of course, the Mayoralty can be an empty honorific given to people
who little deserve it, but not always by any means.
The upside of this Representative/Leader system is that policy and
decision making becomes a more negotiable activity which can gain some
seperation from the cruder levels of electoral and image-politics
pressures. When working well it reflects in my (considerable) experience
of local politics real needs and a surprising degree of consensus, and is
more amenable to pressure from the populace over direction, which might
sound contradictory to not being so vulnerable to transient fashion as
indicated immediately above, but isn't.
However, the downside can be a lack of a clearly seen "leadership"
personified in an easily identifiable individual or small group, capable
of high profile pushing through of change etc. There has been quite a body
of evidence that many areas that have developed significant responses to
"globalisation" etc. have had these spearheaded by clear leadership
capable of building alliances.
But this is not always the case, as during the 70s and 80s in the UK there
were a series of strong and powerfully identified leaders who emerged from
the system who could provide such leadership for change.
Interestingly, these leaders tended to emerge from elected groups where
the overall quality of the representatives was very high, where very able
people went into local politics. Since the emasculation of local political
power and massive centralisation into Governmental hands by the
dictatorial regime of Thatcher and Major - policies carried on by the
Phony Bliar regime - quality has dropped considerably, and few individuals
capable of leadership at the level of the old times emerge (golden ages!).
Obviously a positive feedback system in a spiral of decline...
The Phony Bliar regime's interest in instituting Mayoral systems may have
a genuine desire to see the potential for leadership put in place allowing
British cities to emulate "successes" like Barcelona etc., and given the
lacklustre performance and lack of leadership in Councils which have been
incapable of much innovative work for a decade or so, this may be an
improvement. Almost anything would be if it vested more genuine power
locally.
It is possible to see Mayoral politics having a politicising and
envigorating potential if real power bases can emerge to build coalitions
for change, and these coalitions are inclusive of the disparate interests
in a city.
However, given the experience of the elimination of effective democratic
voice to Labour Party members of the Blair regime, many of us suspect
another motivation. This is the effective elimination of alternative power
bases, by the destruction of the wider structures of party systems and
political/social/voluntary sector coalitions that can be systemic and
surprisingly effective in British local politics within the civic society,
and which albeit damaged, can exert some real if limited direction upon
the representative based system, even after a generation of erosion. It is
important to not get starry eyed about this, but one can cite numerous
examples over the years where there has been a disparity between visible
politics and underlying politics that have led to various outcomes.
Damaged, but by no means dead, and capable of revival, there was a
surprising degree of consensus work in many Local Authorities even if this
was carefully hidden behind bluster and image.
The Blair aim could be truly sinister. Yes, the choices made about the
form of Mayoral system could be "good" in terms of clarifying leadership
with some ability to cut through knots, without losing the strength of a
representative system in other ways (checks and balances on power etc.).
Or "bad" in terms of that wonderful phrase about the SDP back in the
1980s, "taking the politics out of politics" in a system which personifies
a image-based system lacking roots or systemic engagement with the day to
day realities of local casework and representation that is the great
strength of the electoral system that currently exists. Of course this
removes the potential for alternative challenges to develop out of and be
rooted in the legitimacy of real local grass roots representation, but
enhances the potential of patronage politics, horsetrading and shallow
power broking. This of course means that challenges can in substance (if
not rhetoric) be bought off, which is much harder to do for a rooted
bottom up system, however flawed.
If Blair and his minions think the latter type of Mayoral system is
capable of generating the sort of responses by localities to the power of
Global capital to propose and dispose of the economic and social fate of
cities and regions they are sore mistaken. If they think they can
*guarantee* their country - or sufficient of the regions within it to
ensure social and political stability (you can always suppress an
underclass of 30-40% if geographically concentrated) - and keep it as a
"node" in the global system and not be passed over, keeping it
"attractive" to global investors by doing whatever investors want at any
time, they are also sore mistaken.
The arguments about a sufficient degree of indigenous "survival economic"
activity even within an overall global system have been well exercised in
Futurework over the years. Even if nothing else, encouraging indigenous,
even dual economic activity - the mice in the walls of global capitalism -
is a vital insurance policy against total dispossession if global focus
shifts to another region.
Blairites are well set to cut off that possibility for a "good" Mayoralism
, destroy representative local systems, and expose localities to globalism
on global capitals terms without leaving any potential for indigenous
insurance policy responses. Mayoralism is, however, only one small part of
an overall surrender to the agenda of Globalism by Blairism.
I'm still trying to figure out if they are fools, arsecrawlers or
traitors, or what combination....
