What is the Referendum About?
It would be nice to have a grown-up debate about the merits of a mayoralty and opposing systems. Nice but not likely.
We suspect that in a period of stability, the system is less important than the people exercising power. In a period of instability at least the mayoral system offers some possibility of consistency.
Ben Rogers, writing in On London has written of how the mayoral system has brought in a significant period of consistency and stability in those London boroughs where there is a directly elected mayor.
“the new system won the boroughs that adopted them some badly-needed stability. Most of the mayoral boroughs had seen leaders come and go in quick succession in the years before they adopted the mayoral system. Each has had only two Mayors since. Over the same period, Barking & Dagenham and Haringey have had three leaders, Waltham Forest four, Southwark and Camden six, Barnet seven and Redbridge eight.”
Of the three systems on offer (two in the referendum) the committee model is the one guaranteed to create the least consistency and stability.
Residents may well ask why we have local government. If it is to oversee the delivery of statutory services, which is pretty much the baseline adopted by slash and burn Tory councils, then why bother with elected councillors. They have nothing to do other than tell the officers to interpret and deliver on their statutory duties.
But if the function is to deliver things in a new way or to make a change in direction, then local democracy is important. The process is clearly of significance, but both sides of the current debate are claiming to be the more democratic.
All claim to be the sole repositories of democratic principle, but in fact all have a reasonable claim. A directly elected mayor can be held personally responsible, at least in theory. A committee system will engage more councillors in discussion. A grown-up discussion would balance consistency of policy with democratic principle; prudent financial management with the ability to effect change; engagement in discussion with the ability to deliver. But the campaigners have discovered one principle and lost sight of the bagful of others.
We have pictured (below) the only leaflet so far which attempts to suggest that the process will deliver better substantive results. We have pictured it, but it is tosh and seems designed to pander to the issues affecting one community in the north east of the borough, (note the only geographical reference is to Browning Rd). We suspect that this has more to do with the mayor losing favour amongst some of her former supporters. There are campaigning issues that will appeal to some voters, but to imply that a committee system would never raise taxes or never change parking restrictions is ludicrous.
The danger of this referendum is that it will mean little to most of those who vote. And for those who seek to champion one side or another of the debate, too little thought has been given to how the new (or old) structure will serve the people of Newham better. But then, we fear the whole referendum is less about the people of Newham than about the divisions in the Newham Labour Party. And the people of Newham will bear the cost.
But let’s see what the other campaigns are promising. It looks like it is more important to secure jobs for the boys, (and girls) than it is to run better local government. Gender and ethnicity representation have replaced the ability to deliver for residents as the touchstone by which elected representatives seek to be judged.
The only way to measure the success of a council and its policies is by measuring the improvements made over a number of years. We have seen copies of the Newham Residents’ and Household Panel Surveys conducted over two decades and the way in which they chart the progress of Newham (up and down) over time. For some reason, Newham Council seems to have stopped conducting these surveys in 2018. It suggests that the council has become a political football for the benefit of the players, more interested in their own advancement than in serving the people of the borough.