Elected Mayors - should they stay or should they go?

As London gears up for its fourth Mayoral and Assembly elections on Thursday, and local elections are being held up and down the country, there will also be a number of referenda in ten of the twelve largest English cities on whether there should be directly elected Mayors.

These referenda stem from the coalition agreement which said that the government would 'create directly elected Mayors in 12 of the largest English cities, subject to confirmatory referendums'. So on May 3rd; voters in Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Coventry, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Wakefield will have their say on whether they would like a directly elected mayor.

Meanwhile, Liverpool and Salford will be holding their first mayoral elections, whilst controversially, Doncaster will hold a referendum on whether they should keep or abolish the role of elected Mayor.

Supporters of the directly elected mayoral system say that the Mayor is able to be a local champion, who is free to rise above the party political infighting which is all too familiar at local government level; this means that they are able to provide a strong and independent voice for the people of their city.

Critics though, argue that the system means that there is too much power in one person's hands which is profoundly undemocratic. There is also concern from the No campaigns, that there is no real public demand for elected mayors and that these referenda are being imposed on them from Whitehall as a result of the Localism Act. In a poll done by the Manchester Evening News, 21% of people did not even realise the vote in Manchester was taking place.

In a recently published poll by the Guardian, the findings revealed that almost two thirds of those asked preferred to stay with the current council governing system, and only 34% preferring the new model of directly elected Mayors. The article reports that in the North, the split in favour of sticking with a collectively run council is 63/32; in the Midlands 64/31 while in the South, the split is 56/38.

What is clear is that these roles still tend to be dominated by a mono profile. From a quick look at the candidates in Liverpool it is clear that there are not any women or Black and minority ethnic candidates. The history of Mayoral elections, in which twenty one have been elected to date, show that there have only ever been 2 women elected. The Centre for Women and Democracy noted after last year's mayoral elections that there had been a 21% increase in the number of female candidates, but that was still relatively low when compared to that of female council candidates.

In terms of race, the picture is not any better, with only one BME Mayor elected across the country. This is inspite of elections being held in places with high BME populations such as Leicester and the London Borough of Newham. It is worrying that the pattern of under-representation in council and parliamentary office, looks like set to be repeated with the role of directly elected Mayor.

Jyoti Bhojani and Francine Fernandes