Saturday, September 11, 2010
Lutfur Rahman acceptance speech as Labour Candidate for Mayor
I have just come across this Youtube video of Lutfur Rahman outside the Labour Party headquarters in Bethnal Green last weekend. He was clearly elected as the Labour party candidate to be Tower Hamlets Exectuve Mayor. The election is on 21st October 2010.
Hopefully Galloway will stand as a candidate for Respect but since he obviously doesn't like losing (or rather being trounced) - I doubt it.
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8 comments:
The elected mayoral system concentrates a lot of power in one individual. It is to be hoped that it is set up in Tower Hamlets with sufficient checks and balances in order to ensure proper scrutiny of the mayor and council and to limit the power of patronage of the mayor.
If I were in the Labour Party in Tower Hamlets (or indeed in the LibDems) I would be calling for strict limits to mayoral power - with executive authority shared between the mayor and cabinet and limits to the numbers of paid appointments the mayor can make.
An elective mayoral system can work well, but the devil is in the detail.
they have no choice it is government regulations that decide powers and limits.
Anon - while the legislation is not well drafted, there are many choices about how the elected mayoral system is set up. Does the mayor take full executive authority, or share it with a cabinet? How many paid appointments does the mayor make amongst councillors, with all the implication for patronage?
Unfortunately the legislation is not specific enough in automatically providing such checks and balances - hence the importance of getting the details right.
anon the mayor when elected will decide executive authority within the regulations. No-one else. In theory an independant could win. In theory.
Anon
Yes indeed. But there could be an agreement within a political party about how the mayoral system would operate should the party candidate win. That is what I suggest should happen (I'm not optimistic).
agreement? in Tower Hamlets Labour Party?
You were saying?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/davehillblog
Hi anon
Never a dull moment in Tower Hamlets:)
http://grayee.blogspot.com/2010/09/lutfur-rahman-removed-as-labour.html
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