One of the issues I discussed with Darren Johnson for our recent interview, but which didn’t make the final edit, was the prospect of retiming elections for the London Assembly so that they took place in a different year than those for the Mayor.
For a number of reasons I’m increasingly of the view that London should elect the Mayor and the body which scrutinises him or her at different times.
After three sets of Greater London Authority elections it seems clear that the mainstream media are never going to give Assembly candidates any meaningful level of coverage for as long as they can focus instead on the Mayoral candidates from the three major national parties.
The downside of this is that parties without a Mayoral candidate or who the media decide can’t win the Mayoralty receive virtually no coverage. This despite the fact that the first Mayor of London was elected as an Independent.
The lack of media coverage was cited by MayorWatch contributor and former Assembly Member Damian Hockney for his decision to stand down as a Mayoral candidate, in doing so One London (along with many other groups who had something to say to their fellow Londoners) received so little coverage that they had no realistic chance of retaining their seats.
Even being generous it’s very hard to see what mandate the Assembly groups have in their own right given that most of the manifestos put before the electorate are dictated by the Mayoral candidates. This means we currently end up with groups of Assembly Members elected on manifestos fronted by candidates who were then rejected by the electorate.
If Assembly elections were held a year after those for the Mayor it would give Londoners a chance to make an informed decision about how they wanted to shape the body which scrutinies their Mayor.
It may be, for example, that voters would decide they didn’t want a majority of AMs to come from the Mayor’s party. Inversely it might be that they so approved of a particular Mayoral policy that they’d punish any party running on a platform of opposition to it. Of course, any changes to the electoral cycle should coincide with much greater powers for the Assembly.
One benefit of offsetting elections is that deals between the opposition parties like the one which pre-determined the outcome of all votes at last week’s Assembly AGM would be much harder to justify should the largest group of AMs end up being from the Mayor’s party.
For the record, I don’t happen to think it’s ideal for the Assembly and its committees to be Chaired or dominated by AMs from the same party as the Mayor but, however noble the intent, I’m less keen on politicians taking it on themselves to second guess the will of the electorate.
Helen says
I agree, for the reason that the voting forms were far too complicated and resulted in too many spoilt papers. Also, the profile of the London Assembly needs to be raised as many Londoners have no idea of what the Assembly actually does.
Nihonjin says
Elections to the metropolitan assembly in Tokyo are held two years after/before the mayoral elections (ie. mid-point.)
It’s probably the only comparable mayoralty as Paris and Berlin indirectly elect their mayors from the city council.
Simon K says
I’m not convinced that having separate elections for a body with no executive power would increase engagement – it might even reduce it. How much do people engage with the (also essentially powerless) European Parliament, and how inspired are they by the prospect of voting to elect its membership?
If your putative expanded powers include some genuine executive power, surely this would also raise the question of ‘who governs’ – with an Assembly elected later than the Mayor claiming a stronger mandate.
If you just mean expanded powers of scrutiny (and perhaps stronger powers to vote down the Mayor’s hare-brained schemes) then I just don’t think it will be an important enough body to merit separate elections. This raises the question of whether the widespread public ignorance of the Assembly is actually justified based on its current influence – I’m inclined to think that it is (which is not to say that the Assembly doesn’t do some good and valuable work)
Damian Hockney says
Re-scheduling the invisible Assembly elections is tempting but a non-starter. The main parties want them to be very low key, as focus on the Assembly would do little except place a harsh spotlight on its complete lack of powers. It is widely accepted that public ridicule in those circumstances would deal a death blow to it. Such is the desire to make the Assembly invisible, that when I stood for Mayor in 2000, we were barred from mentioning our Assembly teams in the Mayoral entry in the election booklet. Scrutiny is not done by the Assembly but by Parliament, hence as a former Assembly Member I was repeatedly denied information relating to the Mayor and London government in all its forms, which in any event I had to request under Freedom of Information…where MPs could get (some) of that information with no difficulties. To perform Parliament’s role in holding the London Mayor to account. It is also not possible for the Assembly to hold more power (and therefore be more relevant to the voter) because the system was designed as a centralising system, taking powers away from the bottom (local government), vesting them in one individual, who is then beholden to the centre through financial controls and the law making process – which is controlled by either Westminster or (mostly) the European Union through Directive imposed by Westminster rubberstamp. This is why the miniscule powers that Parliament unintentionally gave to the Assembly/elected politicians 10 years ago – through balance on the statutory bodies and over staffing arrangements – were removed in the Act which put in place the review of GLA powers. And also where Mayoral powers were increased in that review, these were mostly at the expense of local authorities and not central government.