Mr Johnson has accused him of bankrupting Transport for London. Mr Khan said Mayor Johnson was responsible for creating the debt but is mean and unreasonable about sorting out the mess. Mr Livingstone pointed out that success as mayor depends heavily on support from central government. Poor old Sadiq can't get money out of Boris. Whoever is elected London mayor will have the biggest personal mandate - that means the greatest number of voters ticking their name - of anyone in UK politics.
Nearly 20 people, many of them outspoken and with big egos, have said they plan to stand for election. As campaigning starts, Labour's Sadiq Khan is widely regarded as the favourite to follow his predecessors and win a second term.
Watch Live. Close drawer menu Financial Times International Edition. Search the FT Search. World Show more World. US Show more US. Companies Show more Companies. Markets Show more Markets. This would most likely take the form of merging smaller local authorities to create a single, large unitary authority led by the mayor, rather than creating Combined Authorities.
Centre for Cities has published a report on how government should level up local government in England so that people and businesses everywhere can be represented by a mayor with similar powers. The directly-elected metro mayors are responsible for setting out a strategy for growing the city region economy, and will have certain powers over issues such as housing, transport and skills.
Previously the majority of these powers lay either with individual local authorities, such as most planning or local transport decisions, or with national decision makers, such as the adult skills budget administered through the Skills Funding Agency. Exactly what the metro mayors are able to do is determined by the individual deals that each city-region has agreed with government. Due to different capacities, appetites and abilities to deliver, the deals vary in size and scope across different city regions.
The majority of metro mayors have new powers over skills, housing and transport. Greater Manchester has negotiated these powers but has also agreed devolution of more powers over criminal justice and health and social care.
Metro mayors have led on the development of Local Industrial Strategies, whereas in areas without metro mayors these have been led by Local Enterprise Partnerships, business-led boards including educational institutions and local authorities that set economic strategy and allocate funding.
Since , the powers and funding of the metro mayor have grown, as happened in Greater London after the introduction of the Mayor of London in This is likely to continue. The Devolution Bill is a deliberately non-prescriptive and enabling piece of legislation that allows for the devolution of almost anything — housing, health, welfare, policing and more — to a local level. The limit to the level of devolution under this model will be the willingness and ability of local and national politicians to reach agreement on what other functions may be devolved in the future.
The table below sets out the agreed combined authority powers in the different city regions so far:. Metro mayors have been prominent in the news in negotiations with central government on local lockdowns. Mayors have no role on public health, which is the responsibility of councils. In Greater Manchester, where health powers were devolved, this was to the Combined Authority of council leaders rather than the Mayor.
Covid has shown again the significance of the soft power of metro mayors. They can help to co-ordinate activities at scale, supporting the procurement and delivery of PPE by many organisations, as in Greater Manchester for example.
They speak for their place with authority and legitimacy based upon a large and direct mandate from voters who know who they are. This allows them to act as powerful conduits of local views, knowledge and sometimes opposition to central government policy which is legally free to impose any policy it chooses. Links to the latest version of respective devolution deals can be found on the government website. You will be able to find any newly updated deals there too:.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. Greater Manchester. Liverpool City Region. North of Tyne. Sheffield City Region. Tees Valley. West of England. West Midlands City Region. For those places still yet to formally agree a devolution deal and metro mayor, proposed devolution agreements are available online.
However, these agreements are still subject to a vote by all the constituent authorities in the proposed combined authorities. This could mean that local authorities are removed from the agreement, and will no longer form part of the combined authority and mayoral authority. In the case of housing, for example, a devolution deal may state that the combined authority is responsible for developing a spatial framework in order to manage housing plans across the area, which must be unanimously agreed upon by all local authority leaders in the combined authority.
The local authorities in that area maintain the same powers over housing as before, but the metro mayor is consulted on planning applications that are of strategic importance to the whole city region.
Formally, the role of a local MP is unaffected. They still represent their constituency in parliament and in parliamentary debates. Informally, given their electoral mandate, mayors can also lobby national politicians on policy matters that relate to their area — a role that both previous London mayors were effective in during their terms in office.
The relationship between Parliament and the new metro mayors, and individual MPs and those mayors, will evolve over time. Combined authorities and metro mayor-led combined authorities provide a layer of democratic government that has been missing from UK policy for decades — the city region.
The UK is one of the most politically and fiscally centralised countries in the OECD while it has one of the highest rates of economic inequality between major cities. Metro mayors give more cities the opportunity to take advantage of powers, funding and leadership that Greater London has benefited from at the city-region scale since But given that the bulk of Boris's steady income comes from the Daily Telegraph and presumably he'd receive an MP's salary too, he'd probably scrape by.
And here's another thought. If a Mayor can simultaneously be an MP, is there anything to prevent him or her also being a mayor and a minister? A mayor and a prime minister, even? You may laugh at the idea. I may laugh at it too.
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