Elected mayor for Liverpool, the latest...
This morning I spent an hour in a room full of elected mayor enthusiasts.
It was meant to be a debate between Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, council leader Warren Bradley, Labour leader Joe Anderson, elected mayor campaigner Liam Fogarty, and lobbyist Frank McKenna at the offices of PR firm Paver Smith in Liverpool.
Instead, as Cllrs Bradley and Anderson couldn't make the hastily arranged debate, it became a bit of an elected mayor love in.
The Tories say they will force each of the UK's big cities to have a referendum on elected mayors if they win the next General Election.
Opponents believe it is a cynical attempt by the party to get a slice of power in cities where they have long been out of favour (Liverpool has no Conservative councillors).
I think it would be very unlikely the Conservatives could win an elected mayor race in Liverpool.
A lot of the debate has already been rehearsed on previous posts on this blog, so I'm not going to go into it all again.
But more interestingly perhaps to the debate is the financial powers which Mr Grayling would like elected mayors to have.
Mr Grayling said: "I could envisage a situation where an elected mayor said 'I want to build a new tram line in order to do it I am going to have to put ã25 on your council tax for the next three years'.
He said the elected mayor would then put it out to a referendum, possibly when other local elections were being held.
He also floated the idea of local authorities issuing Municipal bonds to pay for large infrastructure projects, say Merseytram.
"We want to give the mayor power raise money by issuing bonds, that was the way the New York underground.
"We have a habit in this country of funding things in the short-term.
"A rail track will last for 50 to 100 years, so why not fund it over that period.
Why don't we create an environment where a council can create a 40 year bond.
"That's what happened in the past and it's how a lot of our great cities were built up."
Interesting...
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Dale Street Associates
David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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Why wouldn't we win a Mayoral contest in Liverpool?
After all, in a one off contest there is no need for tactical voting. The Lib Dem vote is for the most part a very soft, right-of-centre, anti-Labour vote. They played the anti-Militant card very well and ensured that people got into the habit of voting tactically.
It's long been recognised that the amount of Tories in this city is not reflected in the voting figures.