In 1998, British prime minister Tony Blair was bullish about his government’s vision for local democracy in London. A city-wide referendum had just firmly endorsed New Labour’s plan to give London a mayor. Though only a third of the electorate turned out, 72% of them were in favour – much healthier than the 50% of Welsh voters who ensured, by a hair’s breadth, the creation of their devolved assembly the year before.
Blair held up the UK’s capital city as a trailblazer. “Once they see how much London is benefiting from having a mayor,” he predicted, “I am confident that people in many other cities and towns of Britain will want to follow.”
Two years later, and a quarter of a century ago this year, Blair’s government created the London mayoralty, the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the London Assembly. Since then, the mayoralty has become, in the words of local government expert Tony Travers, one of the “biggest prizes in British politics”. Former prime minister Boris Johnson, who was mayor from 2008 to 2016, embodies the career-boosting potential of the office.
Coming alongside a sweep of constitutional reforms, the mayoralty, authority and assembly were supposed to address a perceived democratic deficit.
True, through Westminster, London was unquestionably the geographical centre of British political power – and dominant economically too. But after the 1986 abolition of the Greater London Council by Margaret Thatcher’s government (a council led, not coincidentally, by outspoken socialist and future inaugural mayor Ken Livingstone), one of the world’s great cities lacked its own democratically elected authority. This was a running sore. New Labour’s reforms were supposed to address it.
But 25 years on, the evidence that these institutions adequately represent the capital’s 9 million citizens is, at best, mixed.
Admittedly, as Blair predicted, more mayors have been added to the UK’s political landscape since London first took the plunge. But the UK capital’s particular institutional setup has not proven popular.
Our poll of a representative sample of adults in London shows, shockingly, that just 30% of people living in the capital feel they have “some” or “a lot” of influence over decision-making in the UK. Even when asked how much control they felt they had over decisions in London, only 31% of Londoners said “some” or “a lot”. The same figure emerged when we asked how much control they had over decisions in their constituency.
Admittedly, Londoners are slightly more trusting of local than national government to act in their interests. We found that 32% trust the mayor and nearly four in ten trust their borough council, compared with only a quarter who trust the national government. But those numbers are hardly ringing endorsements.
And it is striking that Londoners do not feel they have more influence over local than national decision-making. On existing evidence, that is not the case elsewhere in the country.
Some are particularly dissatisfied. White Londoners and those on lower social grades, with lower incomes and lower levels of educational attainment, are all less trusting than average that the government – at both local and national levels – will act in the best interests of Londoners.
We should be cautious when drawing conclusions. We cannot compare our findings with polling conducted prior to devolution, because no polls in that period asked Londoners comparable questions to those we used. And much of the dissatisfaction we pick up clearly reflects wider alienation from, and volatility in, British politics – patterns which have begun to manifest themselves in London, just as they have in other parts of the country.
Bizarre contradictions
In cities outside London, the mayor plays a “convenor” or “team captain” role for clusters of councils. But London’s unusual 32-borough structure – a reflection of its size and population density – makes this difficult. In contrast, Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, only has to convene ten councils.
Yet London borough leaders have recently demanded decentralising reform so the London mayoralty looks more like its counterparts. These calls may not be entirely motivated by governance concerns: frustration with perceived GLA incompetence and animosity towards the current mayor, Sadiq Khan, are also probably at play. But some advocates genuinely believe that City Hall is overpowered.
Others take a different position. Though the mayor and the GLA can make significant decisions in areas like transport (think, for example, of the congestion charge), they lack the chunky institutional and taxation powers of comparable cities such as New York and Paris.
This leads to bizarre situations. Formally, the mayor is responsible for the critical service of policing, yet cannot even appoint the commissioner for the Metropolitan Police. City Hall is caught between borough councils delivering core services and successive national governments determining budgets – including the Met’s. As declassified government papers reveal, such a situation was a worry even before the role existed: a young Pat McFadden, then political adviser to Blair, privately expressed such concerns about the draft plans in 1997.
Unfinished business
It does not appear, then, that devolution has made Londoners feel empowered over their capital’s politics. Add this to the frequent attacks on “Sadiq Khan’s London” from prominent national and international politicians, especially from the right, and it seems the future of London’s democratic institutions is as contentious as it has ever been.
A quarter of a century since the capital got its first mayor, Londoners still don’t feel as though they are adequately represented, and that they can trust their politicians to deliver for them.
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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
