Colin Copus: Emeritus Professor of Local Politics, De Montfort University, ; Visiting Professor of Local Politics, Ghent University

Alistair Jones: Associate Professor of Politics, De Montfort University, Leicester.

England: Elected Mayors and Council Leaders: Who Elects who Governs?

1. Introduction

Political leadership in English local government falls into two very uneven camps: council leaders and elected mayors. There are 343 councils across England (for a population of 56 million) and of those councils only 15 are headed by a directly elected mayor elected by voters. Few issues can be guaranteed to unite councillors across the English political spectrum as councillors’ opposition to allowing the voters to choose the political head of the council. As local citizens can call a binding referendum on whether to have an elected mayor or not it is also a model of local governance that has, so far, been unable to enthuse or excite the voters into using their power to change how their council is run. One of the concerns, however, is the extent to which there is voter apathy in relation to local elections. Turnout for local elections rarely rises above 40%. Even when elected mayors have been created, the turnout has barely risen. Some mayoral elections have not even reached a 30% turnout. The city of Leicester saw a turnout in 2019 of 35% for the mayoral and council elections. In 2015, it was 58.9%, but this was on the same day as a general election.

Just to complicate matters, borough and city councils will have a Mayor or a Lord Mayor (depending on the type of council). These, however, are ceremonial as opposed to political positions. The formal role will include chairing council meetings and performing a range of public civic and ceremonial duties. At the same time, the council leader will be the political head of the council, unless there is an elected mayor. It may be easiest to see the Mayor or Lord Mayor performing a role similar to that of a monarch, but on a much smaller scale, with the council leader being more of a prime ministerial role. An elected mayor may almost be seen as presidential. This paper is focusing on the political leadership of local government - the council leaders and the elected mayors.

Finally, as part of the devolution policies of central government since 2009 a number of councils are able to join together and negotiate a deal with central government for the devolution of agreed functions, responsibilities and budgets to a new entity – a ‘Combined Authority’. Governments have been insistent that those new combined authorities are headed by a directly elected mayor, of which, so far, there are eight. The mayoralty of London fits more logically with these new sub- regional mayors although that mayoralty was first elected in 2000. A final, and sometimes confusing, point to note is the possibility of some cities having two elected mayors. The city of Bristol is a case in point. As well as having a Lord Mayor, the ceremonial post, there is also the elected mayor for the city - Martin Rees, elected in 2016. Bristol comes under the Combined Authority of the West of England, which has an elected mayor - Tim Bowles, elected in 2017. With the corona virus outbreak leading to the postponing of local elections in 2020, the voters of Bristol will have two concurrent mayoral elections in 2021.

The next section sets out how England came to have elected mayors for traditional English local government and explains why there are currently so few across the local government landscape. The

1 section also explores the office of the council leader. The third section reviews the role of the new Combined Authority Mayors. The paper concludes by assessing the possible future of elected mayors in English local governance.

2. Directly Elected Mayors and Council Leaders.

Prior to 2000 the only method of electing a local political leader was for the council to select one of their members to hold that post. While all councillors would be able to vote at the annual council meeting – leaders were traditionally elected at the beginning of every municipal year – the reality was that the council ruling majority party group (most English councils have a single party majority) would meet privately, some time before the formal council meeting, at which any number of councillors could be nominated by their party colleagues to stand for the council leadership. Once the ruling group had voted for its preferred nominee, that councillor would then be assured of becoming council leader at the annual meeting as all party colleagues, irrespective of whether they had voted for that candidate at the group meeting, would then vote for the nominee to become leader. Only in those relatively small numbers of councils - around 25% - with no single party majority would the outcome of the vote on council leader be in doubt until the council had formally met and voted. The Local Government Act 2000 provided a new way of operating.

Directly Elected Mayors

It was the Local Government Act 2000 passed during the early years of as Prime Minister that introduced the directly elected mayor to English Local Government. The provisions of that Act required a local referendum to be held and for a Yes’ vote to be secured before a directly elected mayor would be elected as the political leader of the council. Local voters could petition for a referendum to be held after 5% of registered voters signed such a petition. A change in the law in 2007 enables councils to pass a resolution to introduce an elected mayor without a local referendum. By 2020 54 referendum have been held with only 16 providing a ‘Yes’ result; two mayoralties were created after a resolution of the council: Leicester and Liverpool. There are in 2020 only 15 directly elected mayors across English local government which means that some 328 councils have indirectly elected council leaders as the political head of the council.

Table one shows the councils with directly elected mayors, the year of their first election and their political affiliation (these may not be the current mayors, but shows those first elected).

Table one: Elected Mayors in England and First Election Result.

Council Winning candidate (first elected mayor for Political Affiliation Year of the area) election Doncaster Martin Winter Labour 2002 Hartlepool Stuart Drummond Independent 2002 L.B.Lewisham Steve Bullock Labour 2002 Middlesbrough Ray Mallon Independent 2002 L.B.Newham Robin Wales Labour 2002 North Tyneside Chris Morgan Conservative 2002 Watford Dorothy Thornhill Liberal Democrat 2002 Bedford Frank Branston Independent 2002 L.B.Hackney Jules Pipe Labour 2002

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Mansfield Tony Egginton Independent 2002 Stoke-on-Trent Mike Wolfe Mayor 4 Stoke 2002 Torbay Gordon Oliver Conservative 2005 Tower Hamlets Mohammad Lutfur Rahman Independent 2010 Leicester Peter Soulsby Labour 2011 Bristol George Ferguson Independent 2012 Liverpool Joe Anderson Labour 2012 Salford Ian Stewart Labour 2012 Copeland Mike Starkie Independent 2015 (Source: adapted from Copus, 2006 and Sandford 2019)

What is evident from the table is that there have been, but no longer are, 18 elected mayors. A second referendum in Stoke-on-Trent (2008), Hartlepool (2012) and Torbay (2016) voted to remove the mayoral model and return to a cabinet and leader system. Interestingly, a second referendum in Doncaster (2018) returned emphatic support to retain the elected mayor.

Elected mayors are elected under the supplementary vote system, which allows the voter to place two crosses on the ballot paper for their first and second preferences. After the first count if no single candidate secures 50% or more of the votes, all but the top two candidates are eliminated and second preference votes redistribute where they have been placed for one of the remaining candidates. The system of election is a majoritarian one and is used to ensure that elected mayors secure over 50% of support from local voters. After a referendum agrees to an elected mayor being introduced the first election must take place in either May or October and separately from the council elections. The second election must the take place at the same time as that for the council and that provision might mean that the mayors first term of office could be shortened from the usual four years to a minimum of 23 months or lengthened to a maximum of 67 months (TSO, 2012).

Once elected, the mayor cannot be removed from office and there are no recall provisions or mechanisms. Only if a mayor commits, and is convicted, of an offence warranting a prison term are they removed from office. The first elected mayor of Tower Hamlets, Mohammad Lutfur Rahman, during his second 4 year term of office, was found by the election court to have committed electoral fraud and was removed from office and is barred from public office until 2021. He was not committed to prison.

Both Labour and Conservative governments from 2000 have favoured elected mayors as a way of providing identifiable, clear and accountable local political leadership in local government but both have shied away from a structural reform that would introduce mayors across all local government. It is unusual that governments, of both parties, are reluctant to legislate for change in local government, but the well documented opposition of councillors from across the political spectrum to the office has muted action by the centre in this regard so as not to antagonise core party activists (see, Kukovic, et al, 2019, Kukovic et al, 2015, Copus and Dadd, 2014, Copus, 2006).

Governments have displayed no clear or enthusiastic strategies to entice councils to move towards elected mayors other than exhortation. No new powers, finances, responsibilities, freedoms or autonomy have been offered to councils adopting an elected mayor and district councils in two-tier systems (with a county council) are still district council with no extra weight or influence to carry in relation to working with the county council. A serious attempt was made by the 2010 Coalition

3 government between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats to encourage England’s 10 major cities to adopt an elected mayor. The Localism Act 2011 required those cities to hold referendum on introducing an elected mayor. The results of those referendums are set out in table 2.

Table Two: 2012 Big City Mayoral Referendum

Council Yes % No % Turnout % Electorate Birmingham 88,085 (42.2) 120,611 (57.8) 28.35 653,164 Bradford 53,949 (44.9) 66,283 (55.1) 35 341,126 Bristol 41,032 (53) 35,880 (47) 24 318,893 Coventry 22,619 (36.4) 39,483 (63.6) 26.6 236,818 Leeds 62,440 (36.7) 107,910 (63.3) 31 562,782 Manchester 42,677 (46.8) 48,593 (53.2) 24 370,453 Newcastle 24,630 (38.1) 40,089 (61.9) 32 203,512 Nottingham 20,943 (24.5) 28,320 (57.5) 23.9 207,312 Sheffield 44,571 (35) 82,890 (65) 32 390,890 Wakefield 27,610 (37.8) 45,357 (62.2) 28.84 257,530 (Source: created for this publication)

Only one of the ten cities, Bristol, voted for an elected mayor. Part of the reason for the rejection in the nine other cities, as has been seen in referendum before and after 2012, is the opposition from councillors to having their power to decide the leadership of the council, transferred to the voters (Copus, 2019, Kukovic, et al, 2019). Where the combined local political elite (Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrats) campaign jointly, or if not jointly then for the same result ‘No’, their resources and campaigning skill and techniques are likely to deliver the result they desire. Only a skilful, well resourced and independently run campaign can hope to overcome the local elite opposed to a mayor, as did the most recently in Copeland (2014), where a referendum campaign led by local independent but politically active citizens secured a ‘Yes’ result against party political opposition.

Central government however, seems to have lost interest and enthusiasm for elected mayors in local government, preferring, as we will see in the next section, to use the creation of combined authorities to pursue mayoral governance. But with councillors generally remaining hostile towards elected mayors we need to consider their preferred and the most prominent method of achieving local political leadership in English local government: the council leader.

The Council Leader

The overwhelming majority of political leaders in local government fall into the council leader category. That is, they are indirectly elected by council members not by the voters at large. Prior to 2007 all council leaders were elected by the council on an annual basis, and as we have seen, the reality of this process was that the ruling majority group on the council would be assured that their nominee for the leadership would be elected by the council annual meeting. Only members of the ruling group have an effective vote for the council leader who is known by the formal title of leader, not mayor.

A change in the law through the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007 ushered in what it awkwardly titled: the strong leader model. Now, council leaders are elected, by

4 the council, for a four year term, of office. Leaders can be removed by a resolution of the full council at which at least three quarters of the total number of members of the council are in attendance. Removal of the leader however, would normally occur if they ruling group had lost its overall majority, or if the balance of power within the ruling group had shifted between various factions and the new dominant faction wished to change leader. But the latter circumstances are more likely to see the leader resign than be removed. There are no provisions by which the public can recall a council leader or any member of the council for that matter.

The council leader system provides considerable power for councillors who, previously to 2007 had a period each year, before the council annual election, in which party deals could be struck, promises made and political advancement be agreed. Deciding the leader was a powerful tool for councillors, of the majority group, to wield. That has been diluted somewhat by the introduction, by the government of the four year term of office for council leaders. But, transferring that power away from councillors altogether and granting it to the voters to elect, directly, a mayor, has been something that councillors across England have been successful in forestalling. The centre has however, changed tactic and is now focused less on elected mayors in local government but on elected mayors in newly formed, sub-regional, combined authorities and it is to these new type of elected mayors that we now turn.

One of the fears expressed by councillors is the reduction in their number with the establishment of an elected mayoralty. Such fears are not ungrounded. The elected mayor of Leicester, Sir Peter Soulsby, has suggested such a reduction. His justification was that much of the work of the councillors was being undertaken by his office, and that fewer councillors were needed to perform the scrutiny roles.

Combined Authority Elected Mayors

The creation of sub-regional governing entities – combined authorities – is a new step in the centre approach to devolution in England, which has been short-changed in the devolution stakes when compared to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. England has not be been offered a parliament, government or first minster of its own, rather the devolution of functions, responsibilities, tasks and budgets from across the public sector to collections of councils that come together and negotiate a devolution deal with the centre. None of these new arrangements will have primary legislative parts of the UK - Scotland, for example, having tax varying powers. In reality combined authorities represent functional decentralisation, rather than political devolution.

The Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009, passed in the last year of Gordon Brown’s Labour premiership, gave statutory power to councils to identify partner councils with whom they would approach government to broker a deal for the decentralisation of functions that met specific sub-regional needs. The first such combined authority was created for Greater Manchester and comprised of the following councils: Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan. Both Labour and Conservative governments have been firm in the intention that combined authorities should be headed by a directly elected mayor to provide the personification of what would otherwise be a very large and anonymous entity and to give clarity and accountability to the political leadership of a combined authority. The mayor of any combined authority has a cabinet comprised of the council leaders of its constituent councils.

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There are currently eight combined authorities across England headed by directly elected mayors:

• Cambridge and Peterborough • Greater Manchester • Liverpool City Region • North Tyne • Sheffield City Region • Tees Valley • West Midlands • West of England • (West Yorkshire is due to elect a mayor for its combined authority)

The mayor of the combined authority is elected by the same system as mayors in local government: the supplementary vote, and serves a four year term of office. The powers and responsibilities of the combined authority mayor should vary across the country depending on the deal negotiated with central government. But, such deals as have been struck are remarkably similar moving Wall and Vilela Bessa (2016) to refer to ‘cut and paste devolution’ because there is little real difference to distinguish between the deals – although the health service, for example, does not feature in each deal.

Despite the creation of new combined authorities the government’s insistence that elected mayors should be a feature of the deals has led to some negotiations with the centre for devolution to stumble: Hampshire for example ended its attempt to form a combined authorities because the constituent councils could not agree to accept an elected mayor as part of the governance arrangements. Some councillors, it appears would rather forego billions of pounds of investment in their areas than accept that the public should elect a mayor. There is, however, a concern among councillors in tiered authorities that the creation of a combined authority will be the first step towards establishing unitary authorities across England. Hence the proposed D2N2 - Derby City, Derbyshire County, Nottingham City and Nottinghamshire County - Combined Authority fell due to a lack of support among the district and borough councils.

A Word About London

A mayoralty that is similar, but different to the combined authority model is the mayor of London – similar because it represents a sub-regional level of government (London has a population reaching 9 million) with considerable influence and control over public services extending beyond traditional local government. It is different to the combined authority model however, in that it comes with an entire set of directly elected officials, not just a mayor.

On 7th May 1998, under the government of Tony Blair, Londoners were ask to vote in a referendum, on the formation of a new system of government for the capital, which would introduce England’s first elected mayor. The government received its first public endorsement of its mayoral experiment when on a turnout of 34 per cent 1,230,715 ‘yes’ votes were received (72%) against 478,413 ‘No’ votes (28%). Every London Borough voted ‘yes’ to the new Greater London Authority.

As well as electing a mayor across London, by the supplementary vote, voters are also able to elect a London Assembly, of 25 directly elected representatives using the additional member proportional representation system. There are 14 constituents drawn up from across the 32 London Boroughs and an additional 11 list members elected to provide a proportional element. Unlike the other

6 elected mayors of combined authorities there is a separately elected entity with the task of scrutinising the mayor. Indeed, if a two-thirds majority is secured in the Assembly it can amend the mayor’s budget or reject any of the statutory plans that are the mayor’s responsibility.

The mayor of London operates a £17 billion budget has a duty to create plans and policies for the capital covering:

• Arts & Culture • Business & Economy • Environment • Fire • Health • Housing and Land • Planning • Policing & Crime • Regeneration • Sport • Transport • Young People

The Mayor has the power to appoint to a range of offices and bodies, which reflects the original intention that the Greater London Authority (mayor and assembly) would not be a service provider in the traditional local authority sense. Many of the GLA’s ‘responsibilities’ are provided by other bodies headed by boards wholly or partly appointed by the mayor, such as Chairs of Transport for London, the London Development Agency and some members of the metropolitan police authority and the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (see Travers, 2004:126-130). The mayor of London is a political office unrivalled across England by any of the council or combined authority mayors. It is worth noting how many other elected mayors look to the London Mayor as a role model by which they should be able to wield similar powers. To date, there has been no move in that direction.

Conclusion

Despite the highly centralised nature of the governing system within which English local government sits, it is surprising diverse in structure – both the tiered and unitary system of councils - and in approaches to local political leadership. While currently only 15 directly elected mayors exist in local government, and 10 for the sub-regional combined authorities – it is a model of local leadership that finds favour with the centre, but not with councillors.

An issue not addressed by the centre has been the lack of distinction between the powers of a mayor and council leader – despite direct election and the public legitimacy that comes with it – mayors hold broadly similar powers and responsibilities to council leaders. Indeed, there is little in the mayoral model that would tempt council leaders to want to shift systems as a way of enhancing their power. In fact, the possibility that they might lose a mayoral election to a candidate from a party other than the one which usually has a majority on the council – an often found experience for English elected mayors - further dampens any benefits that council leaders would gain from being a directly elected mayor. Although those council leaders that have been or are now elected mayors –

7 all attest to the enhanced public profile they enjoy and to a new found ability to network and create business and other coalitions which previously alluded them (Kukovic et al 2019 and 2015, Copus and Dadd, 2014, Copus, 2006).

An additionally limitation on the powers and influence of directly elected mayors in England is that they are the mayor of a particular type of council – thus those elected mayors in two-tier county areas, find that their councils will experience no enhancement in relationship with the county than under the council leader system.

Given the opposition from councillors to the direct election of the mayor it is unlikely that there will be many more mayors arriving in local government, while we will see an expansion of the number of combined authority elected mayors. Either way, political leadership in local government is likely, for the foreseeable future to remain the property of the indirectly elected council leader.

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