‘Manchester-style’ mayoralty will not work in London

Good morning. Thanks for the huge number of interesting replies to this week’s newsletters, many of which I want to expand on in the future. Because I am about to go on holiday and I am a big nerd, I wanted to explore another topic: what’s the best way to run a city?

Power to the people

Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, has fairly limited powers that he can exercise essentially at will (the one exception being over policing, where he has an odd job share with the home secretary over the leadership of the Metropolitan Police). Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, has much more wide-ranging powers, but he can only exercise them through co-operation with the 10 constituent boroughs that make up the combined authority.

Which model is better? That debate is quietly roiling the Labour party. The Greater Manchester model is more common — all the combined authority mayors have it, as will the new ones being introduced for the first time this May. As Jim Waterson reveals in London Centric, his excellent newsletter about the capital’s politics, the leaders of all 32 boroughs are calling for London to move to a “Manchester-style” system.

Because the city has 32 boroughs plus the City of London, the system would have a unique twist:

Under the proposal, twelve council leaders, elected in proportion with the success of their political parties, would be given permanent seats alongside the mayor on a ‘Combined Board’ that would make many major decisions on the future of London. The mayor would be required to win a majority vote on key strategic and funding issues, requiring Khan or his successor to consult and win over those twelve individuals before pushing through relevant proposals.

There are, I think, a number of problems with this approach. The first is that the combined authority model doesn’t work very well. In Greater Manchester, where it works best — or perhaps more accurately, functions the least badly — it is a system which has had some of the country’s most able local leadership for a long time, and a lot of politicians are invested in trying to make it work. Essentially everywhere else, it has worked poorly.

Nonetheless, Burnham’s spatial planning strategy has been limited and frustrated by the unwillingness of every borough leader to go along with it. Congestion charging, a necessary part of the picture if the Greater Manchester combined authority’s bus schemes are to work, has been mothballed, perhaps indefinitely.

In contrast, Khan’s more limited powers in London have allowed him to expand Ulez and finally get on with pedestrianising Oxford Street, an aim of both Labour and Conservative mayors that has long been frustrated by the electoral geography of the borough that hosts the shopping district.

I find it frustrating, as a London resident, that the wishes of a couple of thousand people in the borough of Westminster have what I see as an outsized influence. But there is at least a clear line of accountability.

But what is someone in, say, Wigan, meant to do about a decision they don’t like made by the council leader in Stockport? Ask their councillor to talk to their council leader, David Molyneux, who will then talk to his Stockport counterpart Mark Hunter? What meaningful democratic control does this allow a voter in the combined authority to have?

The proposed changes for London would make this problem even worse. If I am annoyed about something these council leaders do, I would have to raise it with my councillor, who then would raise it with their council leader, who would pass it on to another council leader to complain about.

The logic of these changes runs against the powers Khan has been granted to intervene in planning disputes. But troublingly, many in the London Labour party believe their plans to limit the dynamism of the mayor may have a sympathetic ear in government. Labour certainly appears to believe the combined authority model should be the default everywhere outside London, even while elsewhere in government ministers complain about blockers and veto players.

The government badly needs to clarify what it thinks about this issue if it wants to get the devolution revolution Keir Starmer talks about.

Now try this

I’m off for a fortnight. I’m heading to New York to spend Passover with my cousins, but a host of FT writers will be covering Inside Politics in my absence.

On my flight there, I will mostly be listening to John Foxx’s (formerly of Ultravox) delightful new record, Wherever You Are. You can find almost all of the music recommended in this newsletter in the Inside Politics Spotify playlist.

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