The mayoral dilemma: how to ‘big-up’ without overselling
So in the West Midlands we’re not likely to see on May 4 the near-65 per cent turnout that was the 2015 General Election figure. That would have enabled the new mayor, in his or her meetings with ministers, to claim to be representing not only nearly two million electors, but perhaps one million who had actually participated in their election.
Which might have made it slightly harder for ministers to continue savagely slashing council funding and stalling on further devolution, rationalising that few vote for and therefore care about their local government.
But now that’s off, what can we expect? If I told you the average turnout in all 64 mayoral elections since Ken Livingstone’s first election as London Mayor in 2000 has been nearly 39 per cent, you’d probably be surprised. And, although it has been, your surprise would be understandable.
Because that figure includes five London mayoral elections (turnout averaging 40 per cent), eight mayoral clashes with Euro-elections (38 per cent), and 14 coinciding with General Elections (57 per cent).
By contrast, turnouts in the 13 mayoral polls taking place without any coinciding elections at all average under 27 per cent, suggesting that many voters need something additional, like control of their council, to be at stake to get them to their polling stations.
And that is the situation this year, where, in the four metropolitan and unitary Combined Authorities (CAs) – West Midlands, Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, and Tees Valley – there are no other significant elections. This year in the electoral cycle is shire county year, which should boost mayoral turnouts a bit in Cambridgeshire & Peterborough and West of England, but won’t help the others.
These sub-30 per cent turnouts, moreover, have been in established local authorities, familiar to electors, rather than new, huge, amorphous, unelected CAs that most voters – and, as the Post reported earlier this month, half of West Midlands firms – have barely heard of.
And the situation gets worse. Most voters with some awareness of metro mayors fondly imagine these new politicians foisted upon us will have powers to do the things that we think are most urgent and would like them to do. Tough on us!
In the Centre for Cities/ComRes poll that’s still the most comprehensive on metro mayors, of the five issues West Midlands respondents felt should be the priorities for politicians in their city, only one, housing, is among the responsibilities currently devolved either to a West Midlands metro mayor or even the WMCA.
Our higher priorities were health and social care provision, schools and education, and emergency services, aspects of some of which may possibly be devolved sometime in the future.
But on May 5 most of the new mayor’s attention will go to business support and inward investment, transport, and colleges and adult skills that only about one in 20 possible voters named as their priorities.
It’s a big disjunction and potentially a recipe for further voter disengagement. And a major dilemma for those who genuinely believe that elected mayors represent the best chance we have of decentralising serious power to England’s localities and regions: how to ‘big-up’ the potential of metro mayors without misrepresenting and overselling them.
I have neither the answer nor much space, but my suggestions would include emphasising how different these mayors will be from either existing or previously rejected mayors; that they’re leaders of place – of functional economic areas, not councils; able to provide visible, legitimate and accountable leadership and wield ‘soft power’, with better access to ministers and to other public sector bodies across their regions; and that they’ll be outward-looking and futurefocused, able to attract inward investment and, working with other mayors, to secure, as in London, more devolved powers, both functional and financial, in future. Chris Game is a lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies, at the University of
Birmingham
It’s a big disjunction and potentially a recipe for further voter disengagement