The Anonymous Widower

Mayors Are The Future

This is the theme of an interesting article in The Spectator entitled Governments have failed – mayors are the future. It is a must read.

As a Londoner, I always argue, that London’s transport system and especially the Underground, Overground and buses are so good, because they are controlled and often designed by people who answer to the people, business and visitors to London.

I can remember, when I left London in the 1960s and started to use Liverpool buses a lot, how I found the plastic covered seats strange, compared to the cloth ones on the RT buses in London.

Even in those days, London did its own thing, because that is what London Transport, the controlling Greater London Council and electorate wanted. Ken and Boris have raised this local control to a new level. And it’s not just these two, but the next London mayor, whoever he or she is and which party they belong to, will raise the standard higher.

This paragraph is very much to the point.

Londoners (there are more of them than Scots and Welsh put together) can argue that Boris has made more of an impact on their lives than David Cameron. And this is with the Mayor of London having fewer powers than most mayors. He is one of many from around the world — Tony Tan in Singapore, Yury Luzhkov of Moscow and Wolfgang Schuster in Stuttgart — who argue that the city is the optimum government unit.

So when voters outside of London complain that London gets too big a slice of the cake, is the problem not London, but their second-rate politicians, who fight local squabbles, rather than do the best for their electorate?

You also have the problem that central government doesn’t like giving power to elected mayors in cities, as it reduces their own power.

But surely, if say Leeds wants a tram system, then that should be a decision for the people, businesses and local politicians of that city.

April 13, 2014 - Posted by AnonW | World | Mayors, Politics