London doesn’t need an ambassador Mayor – it needs a chief executive
The capital punches below its weight because it can’t govern itself. Slash the number of boroughs, reform the London Assembly and give the Mayor revenue-raising powers to unleash London, says Joe Hill
To be the Mayor of London is to be the leader of a global capital city. It is a different job to the other mayors across England because London isn’t just competing with Manchester, Birmingham or Leeds for investment, tourism and talent – it’s competing with New York, Tokyo and Paris.
Sadiq Khan sees the job as being a kind of ambassador – representing London on the world stage, and the views of Londoners at home. Arguing about Trump and Brexit alongside attracting business investment. Boris Johnson was similarly a keen evangelist for London abroad when he was Mayor.
They’re right that the global stage matters, but mayors often embrace it because it’s easier than dealing with their problems back home. Because the Mayor of London is unusually underpowered compared to his peers who lead other global capital cities.
The mayors of New York and Berlin have significant control over zoning and land use. The Council of Paris can raise large municipal taxes to fund public works. Tokyo’s government can issue bonds to raise funding. In comparison, the Mayor of London can’t do much at all. He controls even less of the budget than the mayors of Manchester or the West Midlands, who now have much more financial discretion following years of progressively more generous devolution deals.
Even with those things that the mayor does control, often he can’t do much without going cap in hand to Whitehall for help with. The Home Secretary is ultimately the person who gets to hire (and fire) the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. And TfL regularly needs bailouts from the Treasury to keep operating. In 2015, 69 per cent of funding for London’s local government organisations came directly from central government grants – in Berlin, it was only 33 per cent and in Tokyo it was just six per cent.
The Mayor isn’t in charge of London
The rest of the time, the people who run London are the boroughs – all 33 of them. In comparison, Paris has 20, Berlin has 12, and New York has just five. The number matters because not only are there too many, but they are also too powerful. In practice, they make most of the land use and planning decisions, but that responsibility is diffused between too many of them to work well for London as a whole.
The Mayor isn’t really in charge of London but nor is anyone else. The capital is the economic engine of the British economy, but the power to unleash it is controlled by dozens of different officials and politicians, all with different constituencies.
Chief executives of global companies don’t just spend their time jetting around talking up their firm, they also make their business a good prospect for investment
When the next mayor is elected in two years’ time, I don’t think we need another ambassador. We need a chief executive – someone who can govern London and unleash its potential. But for the next Mayor to do that we need to change the rules of the game and give them the powers they need to do the job. Chief executives of global companies don’t just spend their time jetting around talking up their firm, they also make their business a good prospect for investment.
London punches below its weight because its governance isn’t set up to act unilaterally across the city and make the best decisions for London as a whole. With that kind of power would come more accountability – it is because the Mayor can’t do much that he gets almost no scrutiny for the few policies he does control.
Research published by Re:State this week gives the blueprint for a radically different London. Giving the Mayor reserved powers, like the Scottish Government has, rather than forcing mayors to act by consensus with Whitehall and the boroughs. Slashing the number of boroughs by two thirds, cutting the 33 councils down to around 10, and putting their leaders in the Greater London Assembly instead of the current constituency Assembly Members. Giving the Mayor revenue-raising powers to decide how more of London’s taxes are raised and spent, to self-fund the infrastructure the city needs as a whole.
London needs to raise its ambitions, but it can only do that with a leader who can act on behalf of the whole city – not just talk it up. It’s time the government unleashed London.
Joe Hill is director of strategy at Re:State