I’m not unrealistic. I didn’t expect the Queen in the few hundred words written for her Queen’s Speech to chatter on that much about local government and councils – and she didn’t. I did think, though, they might get some attention in the 150-page Background Briefing Notes.
But, no. In the literally brief note on English Devolution (pp.109-10), ‘councils’ per se weren’t mentioned. The search did, however, bring home how crowded it’s going to be out there, as
each part of the country gets
to decide its own destiny.
The Government
remains committed to the Northern Powerhouse, Midlands Engine, Western Gateway, and, I think, the Oxford-Cambridge Arc – the loose regional growth-promoting partnerships instigated during George Osborne’s Chancellorship.
The 38 business-chaired Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) between councils, local businesses and educational institutions certainly aren’t going anywhere soon. Indeed, they may well have their sights set on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund that will replace EU Structural and Investment Funds. Quite possibly too on the PM’s own £3.6 billion Towns Fund, which despite early uncertainties about the eligibility of ‘small cities’, will operate, for starters, through 100 Town Deal Boards, chaired
where appropriate by someone from the private sector.
Then there are the UK Government agencies that Johnson wants to relocate out of London, with their existing civil servants or any who aren’t
super-talented weirdo enough to pass the Dominic Cummings test.
The one democratic element of this increasingly crowded world that is at least name-checked in the Briefing Notes are Mayoral Combined Authorities (CAs) and City Region Mayors, with talk of increasing mayoral numbers and doing more devolution deals. There aren’t many stats, but one did catch my eye:
37 per cent of residents in England, including almost 50 per cent in the North, are now served by city region mayors with powers and money to prioritise local issues.
With mayoral elections due in early May, I did some quick sums. The current party split among the nine elected mayors, including London, is 5-4 to Labour. The population split, though, is close to 3-1, with Mayor Andy Street’s West Midlands contributing over half the Conservative total. And Street’s victory over Labour’s Siôn Simon in May 2017 was knife-edge: by 0.7% of the 523,000 votes cast.
I sense you’re ahead of me – especially if you recall the key contrast noted in some GE results analyses between the Conservatives’ biggest gains being in larger towns and their vote actually falling in the largest (and metro-mayoral) cities.
Just suppose, then, that on May 7th West Midlands voters were to elect, however narrowly, a Labour mayor, leaving Conservative mayors governing, say, barely one in eight of that 37% of England residents. Would a Conservative Prime Minister still be as enthusiastic about devolution to mayoral authorities? We know for near-certain Theresa May wouldn’t have been, but Johnson, as on most things, is less predictable.
Anyway, it seemed worth asking: what would happen in the May mayoral elections, which include London this time, if everyone voted just as they did in December’s General Election? Happily, Centre for Cities’ Simon Jeffrey got there first, so the stats are his, the interpretation mine.
First, though, a quick reminder of the broader context of those 2017 mayoral elections, and what’s happened since. When Andy Street launched his mayoral bid and even when officially selected as Conservative candidate, there looked like being only five of these new CA mayors.
Moreover, all five – Greater Manchester, Liverpool and Sheffield City Regions, Tees Valley, and West Midlands – might easily, given their borough councils’ political make-ups, have produced Labour metro mayors. Whereupon Prime Ministerial enthusiasm for serious devolution to metro mayoral CAs would surely have waned at least somewhat.
However, things changed. Sheffield’s election, following a dispute over the inclusion of Derbyshire local authorities, was postponed until 2018, and two far less metropolitan (and more Conservative-inclined) CAs were established – West of England (Bristol) and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough – just in time for the 2017 elections.
With Tees Valley also going Conservative, Prime Minister May saw an initially possible 0-5 redwash turn into a remarkable 4-2 triumph. The political merits and possibilities of devolution, particularly to a West Midlands CA – with Labour overwhelmingly controlling Birmingham Council and forming the largest party group in five of the other six boroughs – suddenly seemed much more obvious.
Subsequently, though, the pendulum swung. A reconfigured Sheffield CA and new North of Tyne CA have both elected Labour mayors, evening up the CA party balance at 4-4, but giving a score among the now ‘Big 5’ metros (populations over 1.3 million) of 4-1 to Labour, including Greater London Mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Jeffrey’s sums show that Mayor Khan would be re-elected easily, likewise Labour’s Steve Rotheram in Liverpool. In Greater Manchester, Labour’s Andy Burnham would be re-elected, but with a considerably reduced majority. And the collapsing ‘red wall’ would have more than doubled Conservative Mayor Ben Houchen’s majority in the Tees Valley. Population totals so far, assuming the Conservatives also retain West of England and Cambridgeshire & Peterborough: Labour 15 million, Conservatives 2.6 million.
So to the West Midlands, which also saw plenty of
Red wall turning blue headlines. It felt as if the Conservative vote had to be ahead, and it was but by under 3,000 out of 1.18 million, or 0.2%!
Yes, even replicating the Conservatives’ most decisive electoral win for a generation, it could be that tight. And, if it were Labour’s eventual candidate who edged it, that would see Labour metro mayors as the elected heads of government in London and all four largest city region CAs, representing nearly a third of the English population. Would the Queen’s Speech pledge that
My Government will give communities more control over how investment is spent so that they can decide what is best for them still hold good?
Chris Game is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Local Government Studies based at the University of Birmingham. Image credit: CC by Stacey MacNaught/Flickr.
