Could Tories make headlines in metro mayor election?
the West Midlands, with Hammond reprising his October party conference commitment to a second West Midlands devolution deal, to include new powers on transport, criminal justice, data, planning and skills.
We’d been promised second helpings pretty well ever since the first relatively modest deal was announced last November.
But, considering Theresa May’s summer of wavering indecision over blocking them would be just too politically costly.
The process seemed too far advanced, with former Communities Secretary Greg Clark predicting barely five months ago “at least nine” metro mayors being elected in May 2017, six or seven of whom, it was widely assumed, could be Labour.
Since then, though, both the total and likely party balance have changed significantly – thanks not least to the uncertainty created by May’s own dithering.
Some councils panicked, others bickered, and apparently agreed deals started collapsing.
Then there’s East Anglia. The original three-county devo deal was rejected by Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Councils, and replaced with a two-combined authority deal: Norfolk/Suffolk and Cambridgeshire/Peterborough, both headed by elected mayors.
The former was scuppered just a fortnight ago by Kings Lynn & West Norfolk councillors voting against both the deal and their leaders’ advice.
However, on Tuesday November 22, the very eve of the Autumn Statement, a Cambridgeshire/ Peterborough mayoral deal was finally agreed – with the first mayoral election next May.
Now I’d bet my winter fuel allowance George Osborne would have had that news right up front in his speech, not least because, with six of the seven councils Conservative dominated, there’s a very good chance of a Conservative mayor too.
Yet Hammond didn’t mention it – presumably because he just ain’t that bovvered.
But I’d guess – maybe not bet – his Downing Street neighbour, the PM, is nowadays very interested in these matters and in what happens next May, which is likely to be her first big electoral test.
When Theresa May came into office, the Conservatives might have hoped, with luck, to win three of Greg Clark’s nine anticipated mayoralties: Greater Lincolnshire, East Anglia, and West of England.
Until last week, the first two had gone, but so too had several safelooking Labour prospects. And the West Midlands, especially with a high profile, ‘non-politician’ Conservative candidate like former John Lewis boss Andy Street, had started to look, by the party’s October Birmingham conference, definitely winnable.
On those assumptions, you could now see three Labour mayors (Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, Tees Valley) but also three Conservative (Cambridgeshire/ Peterborough, West of England, West Midlands), with the last providing the biggest headlines of all – and suddenly all that rather tedious devolution stuff must strike No.10 as a whole lot more interesting. Chris Game is a lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies at the University of
Birmingham