Vocal Voices

That is the world of the political bubble and of all the political media.
They have all gotten very excited about the historic, seismic, unprecedented events of the Mayoral elections.

Meanwhile, back on planet earth, here is the turnout for those elections.

London, 40.5%.
WestYorkshire, 32.71%
Greater Manchester 32.1%
North East 30.9%
Tees Valley 30.1%
York & North Yorkshire 29.9%
West Midlands 29.8%
East Midlands 27.6%
South Yorks 27.6%
Salford 25.9%
Liverpool 23.7%

So amongst all the talk of historic swings, of seismic results, of all the other overblown hoopla, the facts are that nowhere did anywhere near half of the electorate bother to turn out.
I know that Manchester and Liverpool never wanted a Mayor, maybe no one else did either.
This is just a massive, unwanted and expensive expansion of the political class. Also a continuation of the principle of "subsiduarity", taking decisions nearest to the people affected (in other words, a further weakening of national government).

There is a massive divide between the political class of the UK and the ordinary people. Manchester voted against having a mayor, but in this great democracy that we are, they got one anyway.

I can understand why only three people out of ten even bothered to vote in Liverpool.

Metro Mayors are English devolution by the back door after polling and a referendum in the North East in 2004 showed that we didn't want it - devolution. Instead we got regional development agencies and government offices for the regions.

Cameron then scrapped those in 2010 and did a deal with mayors from groups of local councils to create 10 mayoral combined authorities (MCAs) chaired by metro mayors. The electorate did not get a say. There will eventually be 15 of them.

The MCAs then evolved into combined county authorities (CCAs) the ones we have today. Again the people were not asked. By 2025ish the whole of England will have some form of local devolution - different tiers depending on population size and whether urban or rural.

I suspect that CCAs will eventually have grand assemblies with local councils (the ones we have today) becoming little more than talking shops, rubber stampers, and feeders to the assemblies. If anything politics will be even further away from the public than it was before all this started.

Local councillors do not run councils any more, that is now done by senior officers employed by the council. The councillors are a bit like the Lords. The council says we are going to do this and the councillors can make suggestions at committee stages, but at the end of the day it is the employed members of the council who make the real decisions. We electors cannot remove them.

Then there is an organisation: CommonPlace.

Active in local government but unelected and unaccountable. Look them up.

You thought you had democracy? So did the Americans. Then they voted for Trump..... Ooops.