Andy Burnham says regional mayors could play bigger role in politics

[Woj]

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/andy-burnham-prime-minister-liverpool-city-region-greater-manchester-salisbury-cathedral-b1292096.html

Is this a step towards UK booting the monarchy and becoming a republic?

No.

Does he not release that more than 50% of people don't live in areas that have mayors? Can we just have the portion of income tax that he going to allocate to Mayor's to spend back as a discount?

Whilst I completely agree that we need to get rid of the monarchy - one family has claimed to have rights over the rest of us granted to them by a fictional god for long enough. I can't see how it has any relevance to Mayors?

https://www.republic.org.uk/written_constitution_gateway_to_a_republic_say_campaigners

The question is whether we can trust local councils to spend larger amounts of money wisely and whether we can trust locally elected mayors to do their job properly and not misuse their power.
Often local councillors have less financial and management expertise than central government so will they manage the money properly?
Some local councils have gone bankrupt.

Is this the answer to growing the economy?

Another layer of government bureaucracy was never the answer to anything

It has been in Manchester, Teeside and Birmingham.

And in Cambridge we now have about 5 layers of local government and absolute political and literal gridlock. It’s not been a positive here - we’ve got two very distinct areas with Peterborough and the Fens tending Reform, with Cambridge very much left of centre.

The UK is far too centralised. I might have different details, but agree with the sentiment.

I live in Cambridgeshire too. What are those five layers? Cambridge has the city council and the county council and has had for decades, there’s no gridlock as the two work together very well. Only the mayor is new. Peterborough currently has a Labour MP. The Cambridge Labour MP has held the seat since 2015. Reform made some wins out in the fens in the local elections in May but not enough to control any of the district councils.

Parish, district, county, mayor and Combined Authority.

The Metro Mayors that AB is talking about are not councillors. They are the layer above and control the purse strings for various projects, like the buses in GM. He is talking about giving Metro Mayors more autonomy so that they can react more quickly/ accurately to local need.

The combined authority isn’t another layer. It’s led by the mayor and is a joint enterprise of district and county councillors to facilitate joint working. Cambridge doesn’t have parish councils nor does Peterborough. Nice try though.

And yet on the ground the tangle between the County - which had the statutory powers - and the CPCA means absolutely nothing happens. Parish councils have managed to block greenways, the County is incapable of getting anything done and the buck is constantly passed between CCC and CPCA. Just look at how Grantchester managed to put the kybosh on the proposed greenway. Bus franchising has been kicked into the long grass.

Grantchester lost its High Court challenge to the greenway.

Living in London, I’d say areas are better off without mayors. 🙄

Manchester is not the rags to riches story people think it is.

What happens if you haven't got a mayor

Surely a fundamental change should mean mayors need re-electing so they can lay out how they would manage this and the experience they have so voters can make an informed decision? Still yet to see how number 10 North makes a difference when most of them travel up from London. Most of the South doesnt reflect London or feel an affinity to/that Westminster represents them, so I dont buy this spreading of power being much more than a waste of money.

I take it you don't live under BCC ? Absolute shambles and the thought of them getting more of my taxes make me feel sick to my stomach.

The mayoralty is nothing to do with BCC.

Definitely happy to have more directly elected Mayors and more decisions/spend happening locally, and I think/hope that this would lead to greater cost efficiency over the current system of unelected central govt departments choosing what to spend where.
I'm looking also for some rationalisation and consistency across local govt so we don't have the confusing mix of district councils, Unitary authorities etc etc that we have now.