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Mayor for Liverpool

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Xenophon PCDGS

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I have overheard a conversation on the train this morning that Liverpool decided against a referendum on this matter and have made the local senior Labour member ( ? ) as Mayor.

Does anyone know exactly what really happened in Liverpool in the mayoral contest ?
 
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WatcherZero

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Government pressured the local council telling them if they wanted investment and greater devoloution they had to bring in a Mayor so the council ran scared and decided to bring in a mayor without even holding a referendum. The following is the result of the vote held yesterday, the Labour candidate got 50% more of the total first preference votes than his nearest competitor so it didnt even go to the counting of second preference votes.

Joe Anderson, Labour, 58,448, 59.33%
Liam Fogarty, Independent, 8,292, 8.42%
Richard Kemp, Liberal Democrats, 6,238, 6.33%
John Coyne, Green Party, 5,175, 5.25%
Tony Mulhearn, TUSC, 4,792, 4.86%
Stephen Radford, Liberal, 4,442, 4.51%
Tony Caldeira, Conservative, 4,425, 4.49%
Adam Heatherington, UKIP, 2,352, 2.39%
Paul Rimmer, English Democrats, 1,400, 1.42%
Jeff Berman, Liverpool Independent Party, 1,362, 1.38%
Mike Whitby, BNP, 1,015, 1.03%
Peter Tierney, National Front, 566, 0.57%
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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Does this mean that Liverpool will be the only city not to have held a referendum prior to the election of a mayor, as since I have now had access to the Internet, I read that many cities holding such a referendum have rejected the idea of having a mayor to lead their area in the manner that now seems to be the approved fashion.

This brings to mind the referendum that was held in all ten constituent bodies of "Greater Manchester" by what was then GMPTE, to establish whether these areas would approve a double-band congestion charging system, to help to finance a very large expansion of the Manchester Metrolink system. At that time, many of these ten areas were "totally rock-solid Labour voting areas".....which voted unanimously by a large majority in all ten areas to reject this proposition.

Perhaps this also would have been the case in Liverpool, had the electorate there had been given this opportunity to have their say in a referendum.
 
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Pumbaa

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There was a mayor before this election - it was the head of the city council who was elected by the council itself. Only difference this time was he was directly voted in.

Anderson has been mayor since 2004?
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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There was a mayor before this election - it was the head of the city council who was elected by the council itself. Only difference this time was he was directly voted in.

Anderson has been mayor since 2004?

I assumed the mayoral powers these days were rather more extensive in their remit than those in days of the past.

I note that you chose not to comment upon the referendum comparison that I made in my posting in a mostly rock-solid Labour voting major city area,
 

Pumbaa

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I only skimmed your post and answered your question in the first few lines.
 

Pumbaa

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And I don't know. In my opinion the council there didn't do a great job of selling the CC. I doubt it would have been different here.
 

mchunt

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Does this mean that Liverpool will be the only city not to have held a referendum prior to the election of a mayor, as since I have now had access to the Internet, I read that many cities holding such a referendum have rejected the idea of having a mayor to lead their area in the manner that now seems to be the approved fashion.

Leicester elected a mayor last year and I believe they only had a public consultation and not a referendum. Looks like cities starting with L are going to have all the elected mayors.
 

Zoe

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There was a mayor before this election - it was the head of the city council who was elected by the council itself. Only difference this time was he was directly voted in.

Anderson has been mayor since 2004?
He was the council leader but I haven't seen anywhere officially designating this position as Mayor. The Liberal Democrats were in control of the council before 2010.
 
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Pumbaa

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Maybe it's referred to locally as the Mayor. He was always subtitled on TV etc as the Council Leader. Could just be local lingo.

And apologies I didn't know that. I moved away in 2005, came back in 2009. I'm very sure he was in charge in 2004.
 

WatcherZero

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I think I understand the confusion, theres three notable positions in modern councils, the Chief Executive (civilian, runs the council day-to-day), the Council Leader (leader of the largest party, effectivley in charge) and the Mayor (or Mayors) which are a ceremonial position who wear the chains and do all the pomp and ceremony/openings/fancy dinners (they are usually either a notable semi-retired councillor and sometimes the convention is they are always selected from the opposition councillors).
 

tony_mac

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There is still a Lord Mayor (the ceremonial role).

Perhaps it is just coincidence, but the move to skip the referendum seemed to happen just a few days after the most serious Lib Dem candidate (the former leader, Warren Bradley), was charged with perjury with regard to the previous council election.

A cynic might say that the labour council realised that they would definitely win a mayoral election now, with him out of the way, so didn't want to delay it a year.
(According to Wikipedia, Leicester also did not have a referendum, but Liverpool had actually passed the law to have one before changing it).
 

Xenophon PCDGS

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It does seem that the term "mayor" in these elections is akin to the terminology used by those leaders of American cities, rather than of the mainly ceremonial position seen in the past in Britain.

Perhaps, being the "mother tongue", Britain could surely have come up with a word from our own language which would have better stated the actual role that will be played by the incumbent of these newly-created positions.
 
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