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1 Colin Copus: Emeritus Professor of Local Politics, De Montfort Colin Copus: Emeritus Professor of Local Politics, De Montfort University, Leicester; 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 Tony Blair 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 2 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.
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