Nottingham Picks the 'I Don't Give a Fuck' Option

The real winner of the referendum yesterday was apathy.

The truth is that very few people in Nottingham give a flying one about local government. At the last local election, with the added attraction of a referendum on our national voting system, we only managed to achieve a 37% turnout. Previous elections attracted 32.4% (2007) and 29.1% (2003, pre relaxation of postal vote rules). The turnout for the referendum was 23.9%.

The actual result of 57.5% to 42.5% rather pales into insignificance compared to that dour turnout figure. Despite being in favour of a mayor I would have honestly felt uncomfortable seeing such a significant change if the 'yes' vote had won on a similar turnout.

To make matters worse, over 20% of the votes, approximately 11,000 I was told, over 46% of the votes i.e. 23,019, were postal votes. That dwarfs the actual majority of approx 8,000. I've expressed my concerns about postal voting before and I've seen more than one reference to 'Labour's postal voting machine' about the place, including from someone who would definitely know what that entails. I mean it MIGHT all be above board but I suppose we'll never know.

It can't have helped that local politicians such as Lillian Greenwood, MP for Nottingham South went around telling people that it was all an irrelevance and we should concentrate on jobs and such. Because obviously, if we had a mayor, we wouldn't be able to do that any more. Is there anything less edifying than elected politicians telling us we shouldn't be allowed to vote for something? Still, let's 'get Nottingham trending' eh Lilian? Like she says, back to the things that matter.

And I can't bring myself to write anything else on Nottingham Labour's appalling scaremongering, so if you want to know what I think about it you'll have to go back here. I wonder how much negative campaigning actually puts people off voting at all? I suspect a lot.

But really, the end of it is that Nottingham doesn't give a fuck about local politics. Many of our local politicians rather like it that way as they can get on with serving their own interests without too many people looking. You only have to look at the reactions of the likes of JoCo and Cllr Toby Neal at people who do take an interest.

Still, look on the bright side. I added quite a few new followers on Twitter, with 500 now being a real possibility soon (hello btw), and yesterday generated the biggest number of hits pretty much since I started. So it's not all bad. After all, it's all about me really isn't it?

Addendum

As you can see I've edited the postal vote figure above, following receipt of new information. To put that in context, the 2011 local election attracted 23,986 postal votes on a much bigger overall turnout. There's something deeply smelly about that.

More Mayoral Mayhem

Well, 'mayhem's a bit strong maybe but basically, JoCo's been out being a bit of a dick on Twitter again so I simply have to take the piss. As you've no doubt guessed already he's getting increasingly desperate about the possibility of a mayor nicking all his power so he's been doing a sort of 'why vote no for a mayor' series of tweets. We'll take them apart one by one but first, can I warn you that the phrase '£1m Extra Tory Mayor' gets a repeated look-in...

Here we go then, #1

See? Now then, is Cllr Collins comparing like-with-like here? Of course he isn't. His '£1m' cost for a mayor is a total for of the imagined 4 year cost of the mayor's wages, plus referendum costs, election costs (which in fact will be lower because those costs will be shared with the police commissioner election but that's another story). On the other hand the £80m which the government has cut from the budget is for one year. I agree with Collins that one of those costs is very bad and unjustifiable.

#2

Ok, cost is an issue but Collins as leader of the Council gets about £45k, much of which will be lost if a mayor is elected because the post of Leader will be much diminished (you see how this is going?). Futhermore, it's not yet clear how mayors' salaries will be decided so this is all conjecture.

#3

I've touched on this before but clearly, JoCo has to pretend he doesn't read my blog. To summarise, under the current system, the leader of the Council has huge powers already and as far as the legislation says so far, a mayor won't really get anything extra apart from the ability to appoint assistants. So councillors are largely merely cannon fodder as it is, a mayor won't change that. The difference is we get the chance to vote for a mayor, the vast majority of the city has no possibility of any say in who gets to be the leader of the council.

If JoCo really believes this to be the big issue, he could issue a cast iron promise to return power to councillors by re-establishing the committee system if the referendum results in a 'no' vote. He won't do that though because hius agenda is solely based on his own self-interest.

#4

Oh. Em. Gee. He really said that out loud folks. Can I re-refer you to the link above re power of leader vs mayor but there's too many scandals to link to. Let's just say that Collins' problem is that the 'one person' would no longer be him.

#5

Well, it doesn't really does it? Any mayor is likely to be Labour and you'd worry if their manifesto was radically different to Labour councillors. Of course, if a Leader with much reduced power and influence was to make trouble out of personal spite then that might cause difficulties but I can't see anyone being so immature, can you?

#6

Not the strongest of arguments is it? It's failed elsewhere so the whole concept is screwed. If it had failed in the majority of places he may have had a point. It's worth pointing out that the failure of the mayor in Stoke was partly due to wholesale political meltdown in the city. It was within a hair's breadth of becoming the first BNP council. A lot of that was due to the failure of Labour politicians who lost the confidence of the electorate due to complacency.

#7

Ah yes Doncaster, the ultimate Labour political basket case. People voted for the English Democrats chump due to wholesale disaffection with years of corrupt Labour regimes. Is JoCo concerned about a similar situation in Nottingham?

#8

If they stand and the people see one of them as the best option then that could happen. People vote for 'joke' candidates when they are totally disillusioned with the mainstream ones (how do you think Boris got half his votes?) As it happens, the monkey in Hartlepool got re-elected and his administration does at least appear to be functional.

#8. No, sorry 9

Diff'rent strokes etc. It's a different kind of election. And why keep a leader who can't count?

#10

This is, of course, a particular problem for a politician with no discernible personality whatsoever so you can understand JoCo's hostility. But of course, any leadership election has an element of personality to it. You might as well argue against the tides.

Oh, as you can see, I've left a reply in this one. 'Mayor for Nottingham' is run by Stephen Barker, former PR chief at NCC. Looks like things weren't very happy in the hen-house after all.

#11

Yeah, he's supposedly running and if the people of Salford decide that the best person to run their city is an ex-con with a record of violence and no political experience then that's the world you have to deal with and their mainstream politicians need to ask themselves a lot of difficult questions. Who knows, he might decide to run as a ward councillor next time. Is Collins suggesting he should be banned from doing that?

#12

Actually, he might have a point on this one. Another way of looking at it is that it's such a good idea that both Collins and Price oppose it!

So there you go. That's the best our current Leader of our Council, the man who already holds mayor equivalent powers (not that he likes to broadcast that at the moment) can do.

Anybody really want to argue that stripping this idiot's powers and giving them to someone we actually get to vote for is a bad idea?

Leader v Mayor; What Can the Leader Do?

There are a number of issues to think about when deciding whether we should have an elected mayor in Nottingham, some of which I wrote about here. I want to look in a bit more detail at how much power the leader of the council has at the moment, compared to how much a mayor might have.

Nottingham City Council currently operates a 'strong leader and cabinet' model for its executive arrangements. This is a modification of the original form of 'cabinet' arrangements introduced in 2007, designed to give councils a stronger and more visible leadership, apparently.

As a result of these changes, as well as NCC's amended constitution, in particular the part dealing with responsibilities and functions from which I quote below, the leader has the following powers -

"The Leader of the Council may determine to exercise any of the ‘executive’ functions of the Council personally, or may arrange for the exercise of any of the Council’s ‘executive’ functions by:
 
i) the Executive; or
 
ii) by another Executive Councillor; or
 
iii) by a committee of the Executive; or
 
iv) an officer of the Council." (p8)

'Executive functions' means the lion's share of day to day council decision making. Some decision making is reserved for full council or specific committees, the rest comes under executive functions. As you can see, the leader can decide to take any of these on her/himself, or delegate them.

"The term of office of the Leader starts on the day of his/her election as Leader and ends on the day of the next post election annual meeting (under whole elections) unless..." (p26)

Essentially the leader remains in office for the whole term of the council unless a majority of the council pass a resolution to remove him or he resigns. Previously the leader was elected each year.

"The Leader determines the size of the cabinet (Executive Board) and appoints between 2 and 9 members of the Council to be the Executive Board in addition to himself/herself, allocates any areas of responsibility (portfolios) to them, and may remove them from the Executive Board at any time. The Leader determines the responsibility for the discharge of the executive functions of the Council." (p26)

As you can see, should the leader decide not to take on all executive functions, s/he has absolute carte blanche over who does. If you are appointed as a portfolio holder you gotta stay in the good books or you're out.

"(ii) Who can take Key Decisions?

Nottingham City Council has decided (and included within the provisions of this Constitution) that Key Decisions may be taken by the Leader of the Council, Executive Board and the Executive Board Commissioning Sub Committee." (p108)

'Key Decisions' are the big executive decisions which have financial implications greater than £1m or significantly affect two or more wards. Previously they could only be taken by the Executive Board which at least ensured some collective decision making. Now, the leader can simply decide to take them her/himself. There appears to be no rhyme or reason behind which ones s/he can decide to take and JoCo has so far taken five key decisions himself, as you can see here and here.

So, as you can see, if they wanted, the leader of the council could do pretty much everything themselves other than approve the budget (which they would have been responsible for drawing up) and the more controversial planning decisions. All this power for someone who was only elected by 26% of the electorate in St Anns.

As yet, information as to what powers an elected mayor would have is thin on the ground. What little we have seems to be contained in a new Schedule A1 being added to the Local Government Act 2000 (see part 2) -

"Mayor and cabinet executives

(1)This paragraph applies in relation to executive arrangements by a local authority which provide for a mayor and cabinet executive.

(2)Subject to section 9C(5), the executive arrangements must include provision which enables the elected mayor to determine the number of councillors who may be appointed to the executive under section 9C(2)(b).

(3)The executive arrangements must include provision which requires the elected mayor to appoint one of the members of the executive to be the elected mayor’s deputy (referred to in this paragraph as the deputy mayor).

(4)Subject to sub-paragraph (5), the person who is appointed deputy mayor, unless the person resigns as deputy mayor or ceases to be a member of the authority, is to hold office until the end of the term of office of the elected mayor.

(5)The elected mayor may, if the elected mayor thinks fit, remove the deputy mayor from office.

(6)Where a vacancy occurs in the office of deputy mayor, the elected mayor must appoint another person to be deputy mayor.

(7)If for any reason the elected mayor is unable to act or the office of elected mayor is vacant, the deputy mayor must act in the elected mayor’s place.

(8)If for any reason—

(a)the elected mayor is unable to act or the office of elected mayor is vacant, and
(b)the deputy mayor is unable to act or the office of deputy mayor is vacant,
the executive must act in the elected mayor’s place or must arrange for a member of the executive to act in the elected mayor’s place."

That doesn't look like a whole lot more power than the leader has to me but of course, the story isn't finished yet. There will be further regulations and much will be decided locally in councils' constitutions as at present.

What is new is planned regulations for the mayor to be able to appoint an assistant. I'm not sure if that will mean just one or several but it is grist to the mill for 'no' campaigners citing increased cost of a mayoral system. It doesn't appear that there is any requirement that the assistant would have to be a councillor.

The key thing as I see it is that we currently have an individual with powers similar to those planned for a mayor already so any criticisms of a mayor having 'too much power' don't really stand up. And if we must have a single individual with that much power in the City I would very much like the opportunity to vote for them.

One final footnote. As I read the Localism Act provisions relating to all this, if the referendum results in a 'no' vote the council then has the power to change back to a committee system should it want to. The County Council has already decided to do this. They can do so because they are not being required to hold a referendum as to whether to have a mayor which puts such possibilities on hold. Going back to a committee system would result in a lot less power for the leader and councillors who are currently members of the cabinet. Funny that JoCo hasn't made any noises about that as a possibility...

Some Mayor Issues

The debate about having an elected mayor in Nottingham is really starting to stir, both in real life and on the internets. As I wrote the other day the council's poster pushing a 'no' vote was a bit naughty and I thought I'd try and draw together some of the stuff that's appearing about the place.

It turns out that Ministers also noticed NCC's poster, as reported here in the Post. As you can see this article has grown quite a tail of comments of, how can we put this, varying quality. NCC's defence is that the government is openly supporting mayors and they are just putting an opposite view. They sort of have a point, although the issue here is that the code of practice says that council publicity needs to be neutral. If there's an equivalent code for central publicity then NCC needs to argue the toss with the government.

Anyway, back to first principles. This is NCC's main info page on the mayoral referendum where they put their objections in more detail along with, to be fair, the government's case. Let's have a look at some of the points raised.

1) The mayor will allegedly cost £1m over 5 years. According to someone who was at the full council meeting yesterday this is something of a mantra for JoCo now, something his Twitter feed appears to confirm

The thing is, even presuming that the figures are correct, it includes the costs of two elections and I think you're onto a difficult road if your best argument is that democracy is just too expensive.

2) Mayor set budgets could only be overturned by a 75% majority of full council whereas currently a simple majority can reject a budget. I'm sorry but in what way is this relevant to Nottingham? Labour councillors NEVER rebel and there's no sign that large Labour majorities are going away any time soon. Yes, it's a theoretical consideration for the future but some may argue that such an important measure as the budget set by a democratically elected mayor should require more than a majority to reject it. Whatever, this won't be an issue unless Nottingham's political situation is turned properly upside down and I really can't see that happening in the remotely near future.

3) The government has not announced exactly what powers mayors will have. I actually think this is a very good point and I think that if the government really does want a yes vote it is a big mistake not to have clarified exactly what we are voting for/against. This is one of the main issues that is making me feeling very uneasy about voting yes in the referendum and it makes me feel that the issue is being pushed forward without enough time for local debate.

4) Change of governance imposed from above is against the principles of localism. This is a bit cheap. After all, it is a referendum that we all get to vote in rather than it being decided behind closed doors. You don't get more 'localism' than that.

So that's what NCC wants us to know. Now for some very interesting views from a surprising source. Stephen Barker, former right hand spin-doctor and fixer for JoCo, has come out in favour of an elected mayor for Nottingham. He says he always has been pro but I'd never have guessed considering JoCo's outright hostility. I might be reading too much into this but maybe there is some bitterness following his departure?

His next post on the matter hardly dispels such a suspicion as he somewhat tartly, but entirely accurately, points out exactly how few people you have to win over in order to wield enormous local power as the leader of the council. Surely that's not a dig at his old boss? But of course this is the chief argument in favour of an elected mayor; we already have an individual who has a huge amount of power so surely it would be better if we actually got to vote for them.

Barker goes on to say that 'anyone' could run but I think it's pretty certain that, if we get an elected mayor, s/he will be Labour. I really don't think there's any chance that the other major parties stand a chance and, much that I'd love to see the Church of the Militant Elvis Party swept to power I wouldn't want to put any money on that happening. So why doesn't Collins get foursquare behind the proposal and go for the Labour nomination?

Because, of course, he can't be certain that he'd get it. The problem is known as 'Chris Leslie Syndrome' following the Nottingham East nomination going to him rather than Collins for the 2010 general Election. Apparently, JoCo isn't super popular with the unions and that swung it against him. I'd bet actual money that he is terrified of such a thing happening again so his only way of clinging to power is to ensure that we don't have a mayor at all. Hence NCC's 'official position' that mayors are bad 'mkay?

Lastly, let's have a look at the experience of elected mayors elsewhere. London you know about and has been mostly functional I suppose. Hartlepool famously elected its football team's monkey mascot running as a joke but who has ended up being quite well respected. Indeed he was elected for a second term. Stoke initially elected a respected Independent who was then defeated by the Labour candidate at the next election. Stoke has since voted against continuing with a mayor in the most recent referendum. Doncaster elected the 'English Democrat' candidate who was promptly humiliated as an ignorant buffoon in an interview with radio presenter Toby Foster. In Leicester the decision to have an elected mayor was taken by the council rather than via a referendum and the eventual winner, former Leicester MP Sir Peter Soulsby quickly went on to abolish the Chief Executive post and sort himself a socking great pay rise, neither of which anyone appeared to foresee.

Right, I'm thinking the only conclusion we can really draw from that lot is that looking at others' experience probably won't help us predict what might happen if we end up with a mayor in Nottingham, other than that there'd be everything to play for.

Personally I am still undecided as to how I intend to vote in the referendum. Of course that doesn't stop me from taking the piss out of JoCo's clearly self-interest driven position although I have to say that I would be prepared to bet a small sum of money on a 'No' vote prevailing in the end. As I said above, there has been little discussion or concrete information on the issue and I suspect that in such conditions the public is likely to go into 'better the devil you know' mode. Sadly, I'd also be prepared to bet money on there being a less than 30% turnout.

Are NCC's Adverts For the Mayoral Referendum Above Board?

NCC has erected billboard ads for the upcoming referendum about whether we're going to have an elected Mayor in the City. This is all right and proper in itself, you want to do everything you can to encourage people to vote.

But let's have a look at it (TVM @mikebettison for use of the pic)

Hmm, see how the poster makes it very clear that NCC opposes having a Mayor and clearly states it would not be 'value for money'.

Thing is there is a Code of Practice for local government publicity and I'm not at all sure that this complies.

Para 30 of the code says the following -

"30. Advertisements are not normally likely to be appropriate as a means of explaining policy or commenting on proposals, since an advertisement by its nature summarises information, compresses issues and arguments, and markets views and opinions."

This implies to me that, if NCC wants to tell us about the issues that affect the decision to have a mayor or not a billboard ad isn't the best way to do it. This is probably a minor issue though.

More important is the (amended) version of para 43 dealing with referendums which says -

"The publicity should not be capable of being perceived as seeking to influence public support for, or opposition to, the referendum proposals and should not associate support for, or opposition to, the proposals with any individual or group."

I think the ad clearly breaches that requirement. I should add the proviso that the provision mentioned above refers to the old referendum rules for Mayors etc not the new ones introduced by the Localism Act, This is presumably because the code was written before the Localism Act was passed. I'm not sure that would really make a difference though and, even if it did technically, I think it would still be breaching the spirit of the code.

As you may know, NCC has form on dodgy publicity and the Audit Commission has form on not really doing a lot about it. But if there are people who feel very strongly about having a Mayor they may well be able to use this advertising to challenge the validity of a 'no' vote.

Mayoral Referendum in Nottingham - End of JoCo?

As part of changes originating in the Localism Act (see para 9N), Nottingham will be holding a referendum to decide whether we want to stay with the current Executive system or change to an Elected Mayor. The Notice of Referendum is here.

Broadly speaking, the current system means that the vast majority of the council's powers are in the hands of the Executive Board which is hand picked by Cllr JoCo himself. As such the majority of the power is really in his gift and I suspect he likes it that way. Under an Elected Mayor, the majority of the power is in the hands of one person who may or may not end up being JoCo.

JoCo is not in favour of an elected Mayor in Nottingham.

It's not hard to see why. If he is to retain his current level of power he has to ensure that he gets the nod as official Labour candidate for the post as Mayor and, following his failure to secure the Nottingham East nomination for the last general Election, he probably can't be entirely confident of this. Furthermore Collins is a networker rather than a figurehead meaning he is far more suited to securing the nomination of a cabal of elected members on a council than to inspiring a whole city to vote for him. You only have to look at how often he relies on Deputy Leader Graham Chapman to be the public face of the council to see how uncomfortable he is in the spotlight.

Let's be clear. If an elected mayor is chosen the role of Leader of the Council will suddenly become very minor. Coupled with the abolition of the Police Authority, which he chairs, JoCo is going to have to do some serious Labour Party arse kissing if he doesn't want to find himself a mere minnow in Nottingham's political scene.

The OTHER Vote

An intriguing question has arisen from the voting patterns in Nottingham.

As we know, Labour was overwhelmingly re-elected to power with something in the region of 60% of the votes cast. But strangely voters in Nottingham voted against the adoption of the AV system for national elections, with 63% of the vote going to the 'No' camp.

Isn't that a bit weird? The Labour Party appeared to be urging its supporters to vote 'yes' and yet in Nottingham it's in inescapable conclusion that a very large number of Labour voters said no, giving the Tories nationally a significant shot in the arm.

It could be explained by simple small 'c' conservatism, voting for Labour and No to AV is certainly sticking with what you know round here. Alternatively it could be part of the general 'kick the Lib Dems' trend that seems to have gripped the city, rather than the Labour leadership's call to kick the Tories instead. Any other theories, add them in the comments.