Posted by Three letters published in today’s Medway Messenger have condemned the change in the way the Mayor of Medway is elected.
Labour Cllrs Tony and Val Goulden and Nick Bowler, all previous Mayors, Alan Jefferies, chair of the Medway Liberal Democrats, and yours truly, have all written to the newspaper to publicly oppose the administration’s alteration to the Medway Council Constitution.
Until now the process was simple. On 1st January of each year, each of the three political groups (Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat) was allocated one point per councillor on that group. Then, when all the points had been added up, 55 points (equivalent to the total number of councillors on Medway Council) were deducted from whichever group had the Mayoralty that year. After that, the group with the most points was handed the Mayoralty for the following municipal year. Simples.
Alan Jefferies writes that “[f]rom early on in the new Medway Council all parties saw it as fair to allow the mayoralty to rotate on a points system, allowing people of all parties to take the honour of representing the people of Medway”.
Cllrs Goulden, Goulden and Bowler comment on the new system as “essentially giving [the Conservative group] the right to nominate who becomes mayor for as long as they have the majority”.
What they fail to say is that, in reality, if they were to be elected the majority group at the next local elections, then they would be, in effect, the indefinite holders of the Mayoralty. In such a scenario, I find it unlikely that either the Labour or, following a heavy shower of pixie dust, the Liberal Democrat groups would reverse this decision, out of pure political greed – once one party has done it and publicly exploits the rewards the others cannot be publicly condemned for changing the rules and can enjoy the rewards with a lot less controversy.
You see my issue with the Mayoral shift is not that it is just the Conservatives holding it. It is not that it could be just Labour or the Liberal Democrats holding it. It is purely and simply that the whole democratic process is being undermined – not that our electoral system is anywhere near perfect.
The fact is, all councillors are elected to serve the people of their ward – that’s right, their ward. It is their ward, and their ward alone, that has elected them. At Council level this becomes skewed. Despite their ward’s best intentions, they may have elected three councillors who must sit on the ‘opposition’ side of the chamber because their political group has not got the majority of council seats.
The ‘majority party’ holds the chairmanship, and majority of seats, of overview and scrutiny committees, and decision making committees. Their group leader is elected Leader of the Council, who then appoints members of his group to the Council’s decision making cabinet. This system allows decisions to be made when needed and I have not got a problem with it.
However, when the ruling party decides to reel in the last remaining impartial, non-political position and ensure that a candidate for Mayor can only succeed if they approve, then I take issue. The Mayor is First Citizen of Medway. The Mayor is supposed to be outside party politics.
This decision by Medway Council has only succeeded in severely denting the reputation of the Conservative administration. And whilst I am always proud to say that I am a Conservative, there are some days on which I find myself having to admit to it in a quieter tone.
If you liked this post, please donate. A portion of your donation will go to charity.Related posts
Pity the letters are put on their website.
Of course, YourMedway publishes the whole paper as a PDF or via an on-line reader, which is far better overall. Interestingly there weren’t any letters on this topic in this week’s issue. There was easily enough time to get them in, and plenty of room on the letters pages (just two part-pages this week), so a bit odd.
Anyway: it’ll be interesting to see what the public-at-large make of all this. I suspect that without the rabble-rousing nature of those with vested interests (i.e. the opposition party members) and the media slant, most of Medway’s people probably either won’t care much if at all, or will be pleased that their elected representatives are going to actually vote for a mayor.
They might well prefer this to having it being essentially dictated by bureaucratic procedures (which, as your explanation clearly shows, are much more complex and involved than a straight vote, as a moment’s independent thought would show) somewhat like a EU Directive.
At last the Mayor will always represent the largest group of residents of Medway (not a single ward: the Mayoralty represents the whole borough) who expressed an opinion at the Ballot Box, bringing Medway into line with most other councils.
Um, I meant: "not on their website". Note to self: I mustn’t rush comments out just before Stargate begins…