This Thursday, around 20 million voters in 10 regions in England go to the polls to elect metro mayors, which largely did not exist before 2017. Today these local politicians are national figures. With Labour riding high in the polls, the party could even see a remarkable clean sweep in the 10 contests, potentially winning the first-ever elected mayoralty of York and North Yorkshire in Rishi Sunak’s back yard. Such is their importance that the loss of the Conservative Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, and his West Midlands counterpart, Andy Street, could hasten the end of Mr Sunak’s premiership.
Devolution is working. There have been signature policies such as Steve Rotheram’s high-speed broadband plan for Liverpool. Andy Burnham in Manchester has rolled out bus franchising to address the damage done by decades of deregulation. Mr Rotheram, Mr Burnham and West Yorkshire’s Tracy Brabin collectively are a powerful northern voice to counterbalance the south. Research from the More in Common thinktank suggests mayoral races are not a proxy for national politics. The race between the independent candidate Jamie Driscoll and Labour’s Kim McGuinness to be north-east mayor is too close to call. Mr Driscoll, who resigned from Labour after being blocked from standing as its candidate, clearly benefits from his outsider status.
