Why do we need

George Osborne, the former Chancellor, became increasingly convinced that the way to create jobs and stronger economies in regions outside London was to devolve more powers to a local level.

He felt that giving local leaders money to spend on things like transport schemes would lead to better decisions.

And he was supported by Michael Heseltine, the former Deputy Prime Minister who advised the government, as well as Greg Clark, a Local Government minister for many years (and now the Business Secretary).

The trouble is that central government doesn’t really trust local councils to make decisions.

National politicians think that councils are often poorly led. And they fear that local people will blame the central government in London - not their local council - if things go wrong.

The solution is to create directly-elected mayors. The Government simply decided that the best way to ensure we have a West Midlands mayor was to ignore the results of those referendums - and to introduce a mayor without holding a new one.

However, there are some important differences between the mayor being elected this year and the proposals rejected in 2012.

The referendum was about city mayors. What we’re getting now is a regional mayor, serving Birmingham, Solihull, Wolverhampton, Dudley, Walsall, the Sandwell local authority area and Wolverhampton.

And the previous proposal was for a mayor that would replace council leaders.

The regional mayor doesn’t replace existing