Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Time for a Directly Elected Leader in Haringey?
London holds mayoral elections, allowing the residents of all its boroughs to vote for the candidate they want to see lead the city. Haringey doesn't currently give its residents this choice. Our system, like most in London, is a Leader and cabinet system. Is it time for a change?
In our current system residents vote for a local councillor, the resulting council being then made up of the elected members from each ward. The council then vote for a leader (inevitably a councillor from the majority party), and the leader then appoints the cabinet – members who are given responsibility for specific areas of council business.
The alternative model is known as ‘elected mayor and cabinet’ in which a mayor, elected by the public, takes over the role of council leader. This gives them considerable power over policy and budget. It is this system which is responsible for us having a directly elected mayor of London.
The die was cast for Haringey’s current governance system back in 2009 when responses to a local ‘survey’ favoured the leader option. The vote took place shortly after national legislation came into force to create the options. A paltry 590 Haringey residents responded to the survey (isn’t that awful!). Haringey's website says that 325 favoured the Leader option and 265 favoured the Mayor, which is closer than I would have thought.
It has occurred to me since to wonder about the possible benefits of changing horses to a directly elected system. My fear back in 2009 (and yes I was one of the 590) was that a directly elected mayor was just another layer and that it might lead to too great a concentration of power in a single person. So I voted for the current system.
The municipal establishment broadly opposes elected mayors. Their reasons I understand include the risks of populism and reduced influence for local councillors.
Yet advocates of elected mayors argue that the formal powers of existing elected mayors do not differ greatly from those of council leaders. They also say that mayors deliver strong and stable leadership; that they can act as champions of an area, driving economic development and growth. As representatives chosen by citizens rather than their party colleagues, directly elected mayors are arguably more externally focused and apparently many mayors see themselves as leader of a place rather than leader of a council. It might also be argued that there is potential for the role to provide balance where a council is regularly dominated by a single party.
Legislation allows local residents to petition for a referendum over a change of system. The law would require Haringey to hold a referendum on the issue if just 5% of the electorate petition for one. In the EU Referendum, Haringey had an electorate of 150,098. On that basis a petition of just over 7,500 registered electors would force a referendum.
I haven't fully thought through the pros and cons sufficiently at this stage, but my intuition tells me that a directly elected system may be no bad thing - and a petition of 7,500 signatures couldn't be that hard......could it?
I am attaching the recently published House of Commons Briefing Paper on this issue.
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SN05000.pdf, 266 KB
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Ha ha ha, the current psuedo mayor is basically a Tory. They certainly have money for stuff like this, look at those "Haringey Walks" posters. The cost of democracy should not be a deterrent.
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Permalink Reply by Bob Lindsay-Smith on
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The discussion back in 2009 is well worth reading. See Hugh's link: responses to a local 'survey'
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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I'd like a Mayor because it will help us be more idiosyncratic - Harringay is unique!
Whatever system we have, whilst people only get one chance every four years and cannot be bothered to take it, it's always going to be 'divide and conquer'.
The main change I'd like is both 'informed' and frequent voting. A vote on every issue. There isn't enough up-front transparency for me, with lots of stuff vital to an understanding of what is proposed\contemplated held in secret. People in their millions vote every week for TV shows :)
Transparency
There isn't enough up-front transparency for me, with lots of stuff vital to an understanding of what is proposed\contemplated held in secret. People in their millions vote every week for TV shows :)
I'm guessing there are a lot of internal council emails and replies - apart from those needing to be confidential because they are, say, on behalf of specific residents, I'm guessing that the vast bulk are just matters of fact, a few political opinion and strategy.
Let's make every Council email, memo and document were available for inspection as soon as created. Certain things would need to be 'exempt' (as they are now), but they would be scrutinised privately to prevent abuse. The work Council's do is public work, on behalf of the public - it's not private sector.
Argument
There is also almost no chance for debate - sure, you can post here and sometimes Cllrs do engage, but for the vast majority of changes, Cllrs never get to hear what most people think, so never get a chance to explain why nor hear why not. In an age where comms is better than ever, this is a huge missed opportunity.
I've been banging on about Hornsey Town Hall for years. Recently, Cllrs took the step of engaging directly on Facebook with people in Crouch End. There was a significant exchange of views, all sorts of questions were asked and answered by ordinary people one to another. The discussion is all laid out there to play catch-up with, to examine and review in case there are points not yet covered or, heaven forfend, if Cllrs try to say one thing and do another.
The reality seems to be that there are a huge number of people everywhere full of strong, unexpressed views who know next to nothing about their area of opinion. There seem to be masses of people who are completely unaware of issues Cllrs assume everyone has at the forefront of their minds.
It may be true that most people not only don't care about local politics and, because of it, have only the vaguest idea of the issues and are ignorant of many basic facts. I've read newspaper surveys of how much ordinary people know. They seem to show that people really have no idea or crazy ideas about how much debt we're in, how many people live here, how much unemployment there is, what the government spend most of our money on etc etc. Without this basic knowledge how can anyone expect their opinion to be taken seriously?
If everyone in Harringay were asked, for instance, to name the Council Leader, what proportion of people would know? Ask people, how much of the UK is built on they have no accurate idea but ask them if the UK is overcrowded and they say it is. So we not only need people to give an opinion, we need valid opinions!
All the facts laid out before us (on the Council website) with space to debate them, people to actually read up on issues, to take an interest, to not be distracted by the 'bread and circus' approach taken by leaders throughout history.
If this sort of 'culture change' needs a Mayor, bring them on :)
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