Elections

Unsuccessful Political Parties. Exploring and Combining Party Death and Party Failure

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Julien van Ostaaijen and Sander Jennissen

‘I am fed up. It was interesting, fascinating, and frustrating. As a small faction it is difficult to be on top of everything and I noticed that I became less focused’. This is how one of many Dutch councillors explains why his party will stop having representatives after the election.

Participating in elections and having representatives elected is one of the main characteristics of political parties. However, political parties can be unsuccessful. They can stop having representatives elected. In the Netherlands, every four years, at least 15% of all Dutch local political parties lose all their representatives. What can happen to parties losing all representatives and what happened to the Dutch parties?

Figure 1: An oversight of unsuccessful parties: party death and party failure

In our article, we separate five possible reasons for political parties losing all representatives (Figure 1). In our framework, the first category is that of party death. In this category, the political party ceases to function as an independent, autonomous organisation. This category encompasses dissolution death (the party organisation no longer exists), merger death (the party has merged with another party), and absorption death (the party has been taken over by another party). The second category is that of party failure. In this category, the political party still functions as an independent, autonomous party organisation and is thus not ‘dead’. However, for other reasons, it no longer has elected representatives. This can be because of a mobilization failure (the party has ‘failed’ to present candidates for (re-)election and thus temporarily withdrawn from the election process) or electoral failure (the party participated in the election but failed to have any representatives elected).

In the Netherlands, we found 129 local political parties that had representative elected in the local elections of 2014, but no longer in 2018 (and most also not in the elections of 2022). Using several data sources, including election results, party websites and media reports, we analysed what had happened to these parties (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Results for local parties with no elected representatives in 2018

Our data show that about three-quarters of all the parties that ceased to have elected representatives after the 2018 local elections had effectively ‘died’, meaning that they ceased to exist as an autonomous organisation. However, most of the parties placed in this category had merged with other parties and therefore continued as part of a new party organisation. This pattern is closely connected to a trend in Dutch local political practice: between 2014 and 2022 the number of Dutch municipalities decreased by about 15% and many local party mergers took place in municipalities that were amalgamating around the same time. The remaining quarter of local parties with no representatives experienced party failure, meaning that they either did not gain sufficient votes to elect a representative, or decided to temporarily not participate in elections. It is noteworthy that the vast majority of these parties can be considered effectively dissolved four years later, in 2022, supporting the view that party failures, consisting of electoral and mobilization failures, are a prelude to party death. Nevertheless, the posited causal relationship should be further investigated.

Regarding our theoretical framework, we would urge to keep separating party death from party failure. In the literature, there are many different definitions and overlaps between concepts. Party death refers to the end of the party organisation. Party failure relates to not participating in the elections or not winning enough votes to elect a representative.

Looking forward, we believe that our framework provides greater clarity for analysing the final stages of political parties at both local and national levels. The five subcategories encompass the different ways in which parties are unsuccessful, i.e. have no elected representatives from one election to the next. The model can identify the circumstances that explain why this is the case. In the Dutch case this was largely due to municipal mergers and therefore party mergers. Applying the model in different countries with different systems will most likely lead to different results. Applying the model to national politics will also be a further test of its relevance.

Find our full article here: https://research.tilburguniversity.edu/en/publications/reasons-political-parties-lose-their-representatives-combining-pa

Julien van Ostaaijen is a professor of Law & Safety at Avans University of Applied Sciences and an assistant professor in Public Administration at Tilburg University. His research interests include local institutions and parties, the relationship between society and politics, local safety, and good governance and countervailing power.

Win an election and implement your manifesto – that’s novel!

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Image: Emily Sinclair/BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c367lry5ypxo

Chris Game

First, a reader alert. What follows is in essence an only marginally revised column written for and hopefully published in this week’s Birmingham Post, to which for many years now I’ve been a regular contributor. Thanks, at least in part, to the “many years”, I’m permitted a wide scope of subject matter, but for obvious reasons local government in some form or other is what I tend to resort to most frequently – not least around local election season.

With the Post’s Thursday publication date, this is a mixed blessing, knowing that most readers interested in these matters would very likely have learned the results of the elections before they read one’s prognostications and predictions. What follows here, then, is my third column focused on this year’s local (County/Unitary Council) elections, which were, of course, limited to just 24 of England’s 317 local authorities (plus the Isles of Scilly) and precisely none in, never mind Birmingham, the whole metropolitan West Midlands.

Faced with the alternative option of ignoring the topic altogether, I decided to focus on the four West Midlands County Councils: three with biggish, if declining, Conservative majorities – Shropshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire – plus STAFFORDSHIRE: Labour for decades, but Conservative since 2009, and, until the May council elections, with 55 Conservative councillors out of 62, almost as Tory as they come.

However … since last July, when the county’s parliamentary constituencies all went Labour, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK Party had been energetically hoping to build in Staffordshire on what statistically had been among its most promising performances. And indeed it did: Reform UK: 49 of the 62 County Council seats, leaving the previously controlling Conservatives with 10, and Labour, Greens and Independents 1 each. The Lib Dems, along with UKIP, the Workers Party of Britain and others, failed to score.

It typified results across the country. On what nationally was an exceptionally quiet election day, Reform UK increased its nation-wide base of just two councillors (both on Hampshire’s Havant Borough Council), to a relatively massive 677 (39% of the total seats contested) and gained majority control of no fewer than 10 of the 23 councils.

One can only speculate at some of the results that a fuller involvement of, say, the 130 unitary authorities, metropolitan districts and London boroughs might have produced. I concluded that Election Day column, though, not with any numerical predictions, but with Farage’s most publicised campaign observation/pledge: “We probably need a DOGE for every single county council in England”.

Which could have sounded a touch presumptuous from the Leader of a party who had approached that Election Day holding just two of the 1,700+ seats ‘up for grabs’ – but not from Farage.

I did wonder, though, what onlookers would make of that DOGE acronym (or, in some versions, D.O.G.E. – that’s how novel it is). Indeed, even Reform candidates, who probably knew at least that it stood for the love child of President Trump and the recently very departed Elon Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency, trod carefully.

Created, they could possibly parrot, to “modernise information technology, maximise productivity and efficiency, and cut wasteful spending”, but did they have any real idea of how the function and office might work in a UK political context? Or did they possibly assume that, like so many campaign pledges, even if, rather incredibly, a DOGE majority did emerge, it would find itself, at least for the present, on the ‘too hard just now …. we’ve only just elected our Leader’ pile?

Certainly I, while having at least some idea of what county councils having an English DOGE might entail, would definitely NOT have predicted that, within just one month of those county elections, one of England’s biggest and traditionally most Conservative counties, KENT, would be preparing to face an ‘Elon Musk-style’ DOGE audit by a team of technical experts assembled specifically to analyse its £2.5 billion-plus budget spending and assess its financial efficiency.

Since the past weekend, the ‘Elon Musk-style’ bit will possibly have been played down, but not, seemingly, the ongoing implementation. With LANCASHIRE – £1.2 billion budget – already announced as next on the list, this just could prove insightful and potentially serious stuff.

Until May 1st, Kent County Council comprised 62 Conservatives, 12 Lib Dems, 4 Greens, 0 Reform UK.  Since then, it’s been 10 Conservatives, 6 Lib Dems, 5 Greens, and 49 Reform UK. If dramatic change is to be the agenda, Kent seemed an apt and attention-guaranteeing choice. 

By any measure, and almost whatever happens next, that – in my book, anyway – is an impressive achievement. There’s been, predictably enough, ‘Establishment’ outrage – “a superficial response to the deep problems of local government” … “initiating a review of local authority spending misunderstands the circumstances facing local authorities … All councils have been caught in an iron triangle of falling funding, rising demand, and legal obligations to deliver services. In that context every local authority has had to make difficult choices to cut services …” (Institute for Government).

On the other hand, win an election and implement your party manifesto! – a demonstration that turning out and voting in local elections, even in our exceedingly non-proportional electoral system – can produce policy action.

Or, rather, especially in our exceedingly non-proportional electoral system. Two of the new Combined Authority mayors (outside the West Midlands) were elected on under 30% of the votes cast, and obviously a much smaller percentage still of the registered electorate.

This follows the recent ditching of the Supplementary Vote in favour of ‘First-Past-The-Post’, where voters pick just one candidate, and the one with the most votes wins – even if, as this time in the West of England, that percentage was under a quarter of an already very modest turnout.

To me, anyway, it’s arguably even more important in these local/Mayoral elections than in parliamentary ones – for us, the elected Mayors, and democracy generally – that voters can indicate their first AND SECOND Mayoral preferences, thereby ensuring that, however low the turnout, the finally elected winner can claim the support of at least a genuine majority of voters.  Which means electoral reform – but that’s another column/blog.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Cotswold District Council elections – more interesting than you imagined?

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Chris Game

I’ve literally just finished watching the LGIU’s promotion of its new Future Local Lab – asking me personally, albeit rhetorically (“Chris, are you ready?”): “How are we going to survive climate?”, “Will there be enough houses?”, “What can we use Artificial Intelligence for?” and a dozen other similar teasers. If this is the kind of thing you’re into, please skip this blog entirely. It’s right at the other end of whatever scale the LGIU is operating on.

I was emailed over the weekend by an erstwhile colleague who, driving back to Birmingham through the Cotswolds, noticed that there is a local by-election this week for Cotswold District Council. Interesting, eh? No, if you’re still there, don’t go away just yet – there’s a bit more to it.

No, not control of the council. Historically Independent, then Conservative, Cotswold DC is nowadays comfortably Lib Dem: 20 Lib Dems, 9 Conservatives, 2 Greens, 2 Independents. So, even though it’s a Lib Dem member who’s resigning, the politics of the council won’t change. The real issue is: for how long will there be a Cotswold DC, or, for that matter, any of the other five Gloucestershire DCs – following Deputy PM Angela Rayner’s White Paper announcement that all England’s district councils will be abolished, with regional mayors and unitary councils to be introduced in all areas?

A council which in Gloucestershire’s case would currently be odds-on to be no longer, after two decades, Conservative, but, like Cotswold DC, Lib Dem. Or would it? The general assumption following the Government’s December White Paper seems to have been that in counties like Gloucestershire all six of the district councils would merge with the county council to produce, well, a pretty large and definitely non-local Gloucestershire Unitary Council.

To which prospect, as I assume is happening quite widely across England, there has been adverse reaction. Gloucestershire would be just in the top third largest counties (by population), and in its case five of the county’s MPs have recently written to the Minister of State for Local Government and English Devolution, Jim McMahon, proposing instead something on at least a slightly less ginormous scale. In this case, that two unitary councils be created – covering, in this instance, the Forest of Dean, Gloucester and Stroud in the West, and Cheltenham, Tewkesbury and the Cotswolds in the East. The area is simply too large to be covered by one council, they argue, although, probably unsurprisingly, the County Council would disagree.

Indeed, it has been looking at how Gloucestershire could enter into an even bigger Combined Authority with neighbouring counties: variously joining Herefordshire and Worcestershire to the north, becoming part of the West of England Authority around Bristol to the south, or joining with Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Reading and Swindon to the east. I’m guessing similar deliberations are happening across the country.

Whatever – it’s not exactly ‘local government’ as my emailing ex-colleague and I once knew it! Yes, back to him, and indeed the prompt for this blog. His main reason for emailing about this week’s Cotswold Council by-election was that he knew we would both recall what was almost certainly the last time one of those was in the news – the national news, that is.

It was in May 2023, when the Lib Dems strengthened their control of Cotswold DC, thanks in part to a Chris(topher) Twells taking the Tetbury with Upton ward from the Conservatives. Yes, the same Cllr Twells who was at the time and continued for a further year to be also a member of Salford City Council, 160 miles away, just west of Manchester.

As it came to be public knowledge, it was, of course, controversial – with initially, in some circles anyway, some uncertainty about its legality, not helped by the fact that apparently even the local leadership of his new party group had been unaware of the situation. All of which seemed barely credible, since even I could have told them about the legality bit, without even checking. Anyway, soon after his Cotswold election he was suspended by his own party, “to enable a complaint to be assessed”, which had prompted my weekend emailer to contact me. But I decided even I couldn’t pad it out into a blog – until now!
Double-Cllr Twells’ own self-justification was clear enough, but didn’t do him any great favours. Most obviously it was legal because “your qualifications to stand for election can be based on occupying property or work”. Correct. Working for himself gave him the “flexibility” to attend all necessary meetings of both councils. OK. The councillor sitting on two authorities 150 miles apart had no problem fulfilling all his duties because an elected member’s workload “is not enormously onerous”. Hmm – not guaranteed to make you many friends.

And the killer punch: “I don’t want to worry anyone, but I’m technically qualified to stand for up to five districts in England and Wales”. I don’t think he meant contemporaneously, but it’s a good way of remembering just what the law says.

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

The Little Black Book of the Populist Right

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Jon Bloomfield

The spectre of the Populist Right haunts our politics: Farage and Trump, Orban and Le Pen. Why and how has this reactionary movement managed to redraw the political map from Warsaw via Workington to Wisconsin? Co-written with playwright David Edgar, our Little Black Book of the Populist Right is a crucial analysis of one of the greatest challenges of our time. Who votes for the 21st century demagogues eroding our politics – and why? What structural forces have aligned to enable their rise to power around the world?

In one short book, we provide a concise, accessible history and analysis of the Populist Right.

  • How the failures of globalisation – wealth inequality, outsourcing, the instability of global financial markets – and the retreat of social democratic parties from their traditional defence of ‘the labour interest’ and public services has left the space for cynical right-wing demagogues to exploit and come to power under the guise of “taking back control”.
  • How its ideology of national populism rewrote the right’s playbook, throwing up charismatic, often racist leaders, who appealed to new coalitions of abandoned voters.
  • How descendants of the interwar far right sanitised their parties, new anti-immigration movements emerged in Europe and the populist right invaded existing mainstream parties in Britain and America.

The book exposes the fallacies, flaws and fantasies of national populism. It tackles head-on the ideas of its main ideologues – the 4 Gs: Matthew Goodwin, David Goodhart, John Gray and Maurice Galsman. It then shows how progressives can fight back.

To halt the forward march of the populist right, we argue for a new paradigm, a progressive, bold vision of an alternative globalisation; a politics built on empathy and solidarity; new industrial and urban development strategies; and much, much more.

“Combines clear and concise analysis with a compelling case for action” Professor Jonathan Portes.

“A brilliant book” Neal Lawson, Director of Compass.

“Vital reading” Helena Kennedy KC

Available in all good bookshops £9.99 or on-line. Populist Right — Byline Books

Dr. Jon Bloomfield. Honorary Research Fellow, Institute of Local Government Studies, University of Birmingham.

ELECTED MAYORAL GOVERNMENT – SOME INLOGOV ANGLES

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Chris Game

This blog was prompted partly by Vivien Lowndes’ and Phil Swann’s recent INLOGOV blog giving “Two cheers for combined authorities and their mayors”. Substantively, anyway, although the decisive stimulus was the realisation that most, if not all, of those present at the relevant ‘Brown Bag’ session would probably have been unaware that seated among them was the co-author of almost certainly the most comprehensive examination of this topic by any INLOGOV colleague over the years.

I refer to the appropriately labelled ‘long-read’, also masquerading as an INLOGOV blog and entitled Briefing Paper: Elected Mayors, published shortly before the 2017 elections of what I think of as the second generation of elected mayors – and produced by Prof Catherine Staite and a Jason Lowther.

Catherine, nowadays an Emeritus Professor of Public Management, had recently stepped down as Director of INLOGOV, in which capacity she had, among numerous other initiatives, both launched and regularly contributed to our/her blog. And, while I certainly recalled reading the Briefing Paper, I confess that, with his name meaning little to me at the time, I’d forgotten her co-author. Apologies, Jason.

He claimed, moreover, that he himself had “forgotten” it (email, 14/5), which I didn’t, of course, believe … until, a few days later and following some ‘research’, I discovered one of my own INLOGOV blogs, on the Magna Carta and 800 years of Elected Mayors, which I really had totally forgotten. Whereupon I realised too that I couldn’t actually recall much of what Catherine, I and other colleagues contributed to that decade of debate on elected mayoral evolution.

So, the remainder, the structure, and – I fear – the length of this blog were prompted, yes, by much of the media coverage of this month’s elections, and the sense that the spread and substance of mayoral government over the past decade aren’t fully recognised even by those who supposedly follow these things; and also by the notion that it would be a pleasing mini-tribute to Catherine to do so by identifying and italicising particularly some of her and colleagues’ INLOGOV blog contributions on these mayoral matters over the years.

We start, however, for the benefit of comparatively late arrivals, at the beginning of not the blog, but the concept. Mayoral government is a postulation you might expect to have found a supportive, even enthusiastic, reception in an Institute of Local Government Studies and it mainly did, albeit with perhaps a certain reservation. Directly elected mayors (DEMs) had played a fluctuating role in the Blair Government’s local government agenda from the outset. London, noted in Labour’s 1997 manifesto as “the only Western capital without an elected city government”, would have a “new deal”. Which took the form in 2000 of the creation of the Mayor-led Greater London Authority – in the manifesto, so no referendum required. Probably no reminder required either, but they’ve been: Ken Livingstone (Ind/Lab; 2000-08), Boris Johnson (Con; 2008-16); Sadiq Khan (Lab; 2016- ).

The Local Government Act 2000 then provided all English and Welsh councils with optional alternatives to the traditional committee system. Chiefly, following a petition of more than 5% of their electorate, they could hold a referendum on whether to introduce a directly elected mayor plus cabinet. There were 30 of these referendums in 2001/02, producing 11 DEMs – plus Stoke-on-Trent’s short-lived mayor-plus-committee system – three in London boroughs, but most famously Hartlepool United’s football mascot, H’Angus the Monkey, aka Stuart Drummond (Indep).

Ten referendums over the ensuing decade produced a further three mayors, prompting the now Cameron-led Conservatives to pledge in their 2010 manifesto to introduce elected ‘Boris-style’ mayors for England’s 12 (eventually 11) largest cities, with significant responsibilities including control of rail and bus services, and money to invest in high-speed broadband.

These DEM referendums eventually took place in May 2012 – three months after the launch of the INLOGOV blog – and provided a natural topic for early blogs by Catherine and colleagues (Ian Briggs). The referendums followed protracted Whitehall battles over mayoral powers (CG) – as revealed by the then Lord Heseltine in a UoB Mayoral Debate (CG) – a combination of ministerial indecision and interference (CG) against a backdrop of opposition from most of the respective councils’ leaderships, with Bristol the only one of the 12 cities voting even narrowly in favour (Thom Oliver).  

Birmingham voted 58% against, despite Labour’s having in Liam Byrne a candidate raring to go, and Coventry 64% against. There was speculation over whether the addition of a well publicised mayoral recall provision (CG) might have swung some of the lost referendums. But it was what it looked: an overdue, and to some welcome (Andrew Coulson), end of an episode (Karin Bottom);arguably “the wrong solution to the wrong problem” (Catherine Durose).

Since then, the referendums successfully removing elected mayors (Stoke-on-Trent, Hartlepool, Torbay, Bristol) have exceeded those creating new ones (Copeland, Croydon) – though, in fairness, those four removals were more than matched by five retention votes.

A ‘mayoral map’ at the end of that first decade would have looked something like the inset in my illustration of in fact the first 20 years of referendum results – numerous splotches of red for Reject, a few smaller green specks for Accept, and overall a patchy, somewhat arbitrary, experiment that on a national scale never really took off.  

The mayoral concept, though, had also generated interest outside local government – the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), for instance, advocating Mayors for Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, and Liverpool City Region to take the required ‘big’ decisions on housing, transport, and regional development. Prime Minister David Cameron too was a ‘city mayors’ fan, although what scale of ‘city’ wasn’t initially clear, until in 2014 what became known as the first ‘devolution deal’ (Catherine Needham) was announced with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Headed by an elected ‘metro-mayor’ (CG), comparable to the Mayor of London, the GMCA would have greater control over local transport, housing, skills and healthcare, with “the levers you need to grow your local economy”.  

New legislation – the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016 – was required, allowing the introduction of directly elected Mayoral Combined Authority or ‘Metro Mayors’ (Vivien Lowndes & Phil Swann) (+ Catherine Staite) in England and Wales, with devolved housing, transport, planning and policing powers.

The Combined Authority elections were held in May 2017 – not coinciding with the General Election (CG) as PM Theresa May had contemplated but, in contrast to Rishi Sunak, chickened out of – with perhaps usefully split results (CG). Elected were Andy Burnham (Lab, Greater Manchester), Steve Rotheram (Lab, Liverpool City Region), Ben Houchen (Cons, Tees Valley), Andy Street (Cons, West Midlands), Tim Bowles (Cons, West of England), and James Palmer (Cons, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough) – followed in 2018 by Dan Jarvis (Lab, Sheffield City Region). The map had started to change – even within the first hundred days (CG) – stutteringly under the less committed Theresa May and/or in several cases where groups of local authorities failed to agree – but eventually dramatically, as evidenced in the larger illustrated map. The Staite/Lowther ‘Briefing Paper’ was well timed.

A few years on, mayoral devolution has trailblazed across the country (CG) to a greater extent than even some commentators on this year’s local elections seemed to have difficulty grasping. As of March 2024, devolution deals had been agreed with 22 areas, covering 60% of the English population – most recently, in late 2022, North of Tyne, Norfolk/Suffolk, East Midlands, York & North Yorkshire; in 2023 Cornwall, Greater Manchester and West Midlands (‘Trailblazers’), Greater Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Hull/East Yorkshire; and so far in 2024 Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire and Surrey.  

From next year, if you draw a straightish line from, say, Ipswich in South Suffolk up through about Alvechurch in South Birmingham, heading for Shrewsbury, at least five-sixths of the bits of England to your north will be under mayoral devolution. Which, to me anyway, seems pretty dramatic news, and considerably more interesting than the endless General Election Date speculation that passed this May for ‘Local Elections’ reporting.

Picture credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mayor_Quimby

Chris Game is an INLOGOV Associate, and Visiting Professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan.  He is joint-author (with Professor David Wilson) of the successive editions of Local Government in the United Kingdom, and a regular columnist for The Birmingham Post.

Two cheers for combined authorities and their mayors

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Vivien Lowndes and Phil Swann

There are reasons to be cheerful about the fact that the newest component of English local government, the mayoral combined authorities, were in the headlines this spring. There were also reasons for caution, however, most notably the particular focus on two of the mayoral elections, in Teesside and the West Midlands, as a guide to the popularity (or not) nationally of Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party.

This fact that combined authorities were in the news is a prompt to take stock of their development and impact with some thoughts stimulated by the discussion at a recent INLOGOV Brown Bag[1] session.

The media attention was attributable to the mayoral elections, with many of the incumbent candidates having established a national profile by, for example, challenging the government’s approach to Covid (Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester), defying political gravity and weak governance (Ben Houchen in Teesside) or crafting a new brand of active, compassionate Conservatism and challenging the government’s pruning of HS2 (Andy Street in the West Midlands).

The mayors have also disrupted the escalator assumption of British politics in which ambitious politicians use local government as a stepping stone to parliament and government. Burnham, Liverpool City Region’s Steve Rotherham and the new mayor of the East Midlands Claire Ward have each moved in the opposite direction.

The metro mayors undoubtedly have higher profiles than most council leaders. They have demonstrated impact beyond their statutory remit through soft power, particularly their ability to convene discussions and galvanise action on issues such as public health and homelessness.

Doubts remain about the sense of vesting so much power in a single individual. Only three of the twelve metro-mayors are women, showing the danger of equating ‘strong leader’ with ‘strong man’. More effort is needed on the part of political parties to diversify their mayoral candidate selection.

It is also valid to question whether, for example, an elected mayor in the West Midlands would have added more value as part of the city council’s governance rather than that of the wider city region. Some would argue that the city would benefit from the type of focussed political leadership that Mayor Jules Pipe provided in Hackney. Experience in both Liverpool and Bristol suggests that having a mayor at both city and city region level causes confusion.

There has been very little discussion about the role of council leaders as key players in the governance of combined authorities through their membership of the mayors’ cabinets. As one council leader in Greater Manchester is quoted[2] as saying: “We have to work with a mayor we did not want while he has to work with a cabinet he did not chose”.

The Greater London Authority model is very different, with a separately elected London assembly as well as a mayor. While this may seem more democratic, public awareness of the assembly is far lower than that of the mayor[3]. Perhaps it is time for a comparative review of these two very different sets of governance arrangements. In both cases, there is a strong argument for greater public involvement outside of the electoral cycle, both in setting up new combined authorities and to inform ongoing priorities.

The role of council leaders is inevitably linked with the wider question of the relationship between the combined authorities and their constituent councils. To date this has proved to be remarkably smooth, particularly given the often toxic precedent of county-district relations. The next period may be more testing. To date, councils and metro mayors have been united in coping with austerity, but difficult decisions about priorities will have to be taken should a new government make limited additional resources available. The increased interest of combined authorities and mayors in strategic spatial planning and housing will also raise challenging and potentially divisive issues.

The jury is out on the extent to which the establishment of combined authorities has led to substantive devolution of power from central government, although progress has been made in areas such as adult education, transport, health (in Greater Manchester) and mental health (in the West Midlands). While the new ‘trailblazer deals’ in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands promise a single funding settlement with central government, other combined authorities find themselves still bogged down in competitive bidding for relatively small pots of money.

One important feature of combined authorities is the way they are creating opportunities for innovation and testing new ways of working at a local level. To fully exploit the potential of this development it is important that arrangements are put in place to capture this learning and share it between combined authorities, and especially with newcomers like East Midlands, North East and York and North Yorkshire. There is also potential for metro-mayors to speak with a stronger collective voice in challenging and informing central government on issues affecting local and regional governance.

Finally, it is important to remember that combined authorities did not begin with a blank sheet of paper. The GLA and many of the combined authorities have similar boundaries as the GLC and metropolitan counties which were abolished by Margaret Thatcher in a fit of political pique in the 1980s.

Harold Macmillan pioneered regional arrangements for devolved delivery with regional boards to promote industrial productivity during the second world war and regional housing production boards to help meet his 300,000 a year housing target in the 1950s. Neither were well-received in Whitehall. John Prescott followed with his regional development agencies, abolished by Cameron’s coalition government, and his failed bid to create regional assemblies. What marks out combined authorities is the lack of a ‘one size fits all’ approach, with size, functions and governance arrangements varying around the country.[4] Indeed, only 50% of England’s population live in combined authority areas (so far).

Given this rocky terrain, it may be rash to vest too much hope in combined authorities and their mayors. But they clearly have the potential to disrupt our centralised politics and join-up aspects of regional governance after decades of damaging fragmentation.

Vivien Lowndes is Professor Emerita in the School of Government, University of Birmingham.

Phil Swann is studying for a PhD at INLOGOV in the Department of Public Administration and Policy, University of Birmingham, on the contribution of politicians to central-local government relations.

Picture credit: https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/sir-keir-starmer-walsall-pledges-29162669

[1] INLOGOV’s Brown Bag sessions are informal monthly discussions on events in and around local government bringing together academics, researchers, students, practitioners and alumni. For further details please Phil Swann ([email protected])

[2] Blakeley, G and Evans, B. 2023 How metro mayors are getting things done – even if they have limited money and power. The Conversation June 28 2023.

[3] According to London Elects (londonelects.org.uk) in January 2020 58% of people were aware that a mayoral election was taking place compared with 32% for the assembly election (down from 40% in 2016).

[4] Durose, C. and Lowndes, V. 2021. Why are designs for urban governance so often incomplete? A conceptual framework for explaining and harnessing institutional incompleteness, Environment & Planning C: Politics & Space, https://doi.org/10.1177/2399654421990;

Durose, C. and Lowndes, V. 2023. The pros and cons of messy devo (themj.co.uk) Municipal Journal