Cllr Peter Golds (Blackwall and Cubitt Town Ward) congratulates Boris Johnson on his re-election as Mayor of London and considers the future for Council-level elected mayors in England.
Last Friday, some twenty six hours after the polls closed, Boris Johnson was returned as Mayor of London for a second term. This was a remarkable achievement for Boris and his campaign team. For Ken Livingstone, this was the end of a career spanning four decades and the final curtain for perhaps the most ideologically driven major politician in the country.
Boris Johnson now has a superb window of opportunity with the largest individual mandate of any elected politician in the UK. He had an imaginative and progressive manifesto, which when implemented will seal his reputation as a vote winner, not only when the political situation is easy, but also in electorally difficult times. He is, and remains hugely popular and has the opportunity and policies to build further political success on that popularity.
Somewhat lost in the coverage of the local elections were the referendums to establish Executive Mayors in many of England’s largest cities. All but one, in Bristol, resulted in a No vote, and there is likely to be a re-think on this policy. The regional model as established in London does not appear to work well for local authorities, nor has it caught the imagination of the electorate. The overwhelming majority of mayoral referendums held in the past decade have resulted in No votes and clearly the system has not caught on. Indeed, the Tower Hamlets experience has not been a good advertisement to promoters of this system of this system.
Cllr Peter Golds can be contacted via e-mail at [email protected]