Metro mayors, who really cares? Other than the odd unimaginative think tank report and a few Scottish Labour politicians desperate to sound like they have a policy, it’s rarely been the talk of the steamie. Usually, when we hear talk from Scottish Labour about copying best practice from England, it is to cement the party’s claim that we have “more in common with Birmingham than Bearsden”, although I haven’t heard that one for a while now for some reason or another.
With two thirds of the land mass of England and one tenth of the population it seems rather foolish to assume that local government structures there could just be copied and pasted onto Scotland: but then it was SW1A’s obsession with copying and pasting American politics that brought us the concept of “metro mayors”, so you can’t blame them for trying the same wheeze up here.
Scotland has only one metropolitan region, Glasgow, and it already has a regional cabinet made up of the democratically elected leaders of their respective councils. The logic is apparently that large metro areas need strategic oversight, but the Glasgow city region cabinet already provides this. Scottish Labour’s Andy Burnham fetishists have never dealt with this paradox in their logic. If local councils had the powers and finances required to deliver more strategic regional projects, there would be no need for a mayor, yet if a mayor didn’t have these there would be no point in them.
Councils need more money, fewer strings attached to it and less paternalistic nonsense from all concerned. Basically, give us the cash and get out of our way. Take levelling up: Glasgow spent significant time and resources putting together bids to then be told the night before that none of them would actually be eligible because UK ministers had changed their minds. The eventual award, made some months later, couldn’t hide the fact that the constant cycle of having to pay consultants to put together bids for pots of funding wastes huge chunks of dwindling budgets while denuding local government of the talent and expertise to deliver.
A metro mayor won’t somehow magic up the many, many millions that our regional transport system will require, nor will it provide more democratic oversight than a cabinet made up of leaders from different political parties and local authorities. There is little evidence that metro mayors have made any real difference, bar some hot air and PR, whereas Glasgow is fast becoming the UK’s most innovative regional economy, topping the list for foreign direct investment and shifting the dial on the most stubborn of economic inequality indicators.
Advertisement
If parliamentarians want local governments to deliver more, then we need trust, respect and, quite frankly, some flexibility and humility from legislators rather than constant tinkering from those who see themselves as our betters.
Ruairi Kelly is SNP councillor for Glasgow North East
