London Mayor Boris Johnson has now appointed five deputy mayors in various guises – messrs Barnes, Clement, Lewis, Malthouse and now Tim Parker too. Do you get the feeling that, just perhaps, he’s not that keen on actually doing the job of Mayor himself? After all, it’s not as if he’s given up his journalism commitments and he’s still hanging on as an MP (though for how long, who knows? But the extra money must be nice while you can get it).
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2 Comments
I thought this always was going to be the idea – that Johnson would be the front-man, but he was a “good delegator”. It actually makes a great deal of sense to me that the directly elected mayor system should work like this – the mayor constitutionally makes the decisions, but much of the practical decision making is done by people appointed who have the technical knowledge. It’s quite clear that mayoral elections aren’t necessarily going to put someone with the necessary technical expertise in the mayoral chair.
As an opponent of the mayoral system, I’d prefer it if appointments of the technicians who really make the decisions were in the hands of a representative council, and the representative council also has the final agreement on those decisions rather than one person.
But on the whole I think the mayoral system is safer if it becomes established that the mayor is to some extent a constitutional monarch, so I wouldn’t knock Johnson for moving it that way.
Didn’t a certain high profile Liberal Democrat personality get into a lot of trouble with the party’s Federal Executive for appointing a lot of Deputies with no obvious redeeming talents other than being good mates with said personality?