Entire voting system needs radical change
GORDON Goode raises some interesting, if misguided, points on democracy, and local democracy in particular.
I agree with him that the current system (a mayor only for Leicester) fails us because Leicester is connected further afield with cities such as Nottingham and Derby.
Indeed, it is not good enough that the “East Midlands mayor” is essentially now the mayor of Nottingham and Derby.
We are left out, as are Lincoln and Northampton, the other two major places in the East Midlands.
But it’s a failure of central government not to pass enabling legislation to pull the urban centres together around markets and locations which interact.
The mayoral system is a dog’s dinner and needs rebuilding from the bottom up around regional assemblies that have law-making and even financial powers (this is evident in Germany, a far more successful economy that the UK’s).
Our system is simply not transparent, is open to corruption and vulnerable to the whims of Westminster decision-making.
Mr Goode is right. We need more democracy, but this can’t be selective.
He complains that Sir Peter only had 35,002 votes (in 2023) to become mayor.
But at 39 per cent of the votes, this is only marginally lower than the Tories received in 2019 to run the whole country.
Further, the EU vote to Leave was only 37 per cent of the entire electorate. These numbers are pitiful.
Sir Peter is as equally badly justified to be running Leicester as the Tories are to be running the country, or indeed for Leave voters to have wrecked our future.
The voting system in the UK is a mess. It needs ripping up and starting again.
The need for tactical voting under first past the post is an insult to our democratic rights.
We need proportional representation supported by regional structures (for whom we also vote) and, furthermore, a rejoining of the EU where we can also vote for a number of those pesky foreigners who are currently shutting us out of our own economic and political futures.
Dr Andrew Golland,