Elected Mayor

The Lord Mayor admired the young couple sitting before him.

Richard and Stacie Newton were being given the prestigious honoured citizens award on Tuesday afternoon for their part in helping to close a neighbourhood drugs den.

Their inspiring story of standing up for community values struck a chord with him, and he was enjoying his time entertaining them in the parlour on Tuesday afternoon.

Council officials entered – cynics would say they’d chosen a time when he was at his most unguarded – asking him to give the nod to an emergency council meeting.

The emergency meeting would be used to mark the start of an attempt by Labour to ram through a last-minute consultation process in preparation for installing an all-powerful elected mayor next May.

These things are usually a formality. The officers must have fancied their chances. To an outside observer, it would look like he was being bounced.

But he wasn’t ready to accede to them. He did what any responsible mayor would have done.

“I’d like to see the constitution before deciding,” he said.

And that’s where the trouble began.

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The previous evening, the city’s Labour councillors had met for their regular group meeting.

In essence, this group meeting is about as powerful as the monthly assembly of all councillors.

With a chunky majority in the chamber, what they say goes.

After a blog post by myself on the issue of elected mayors, and a feature on last Sunday’s politics show, anticipation had built for the vote on whether to have a directly elected leader of the city.

Whichever way the vote went would help shape the city’s political scene for years to come.

One cabinet member, Paul Westley, had already broken cover. He’d told the BBC he was against the idea – but leader Veejay Patel had made up his mind and pushed for consensus.

The vote was carried, but by a smaller margin than expected. Councillors who’d left the four-hour meeting early could have made the vote even closer.

Deputy leader Vi Dempster, Veejay’s right-hand woman, was one of more than ten councillors who voted against the plan.

All was not well. Things needed to be pushed through quickly.

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It needn’t have been such a rush.

Many councils carried out and completed the consultation process months ago. Leicester City Council’s was a last minute rush job.

Why? Some claim former leader Ross Willmott put it on the back-burner for too long. But Veejay has been in office for nine months. Many don’t buy that line.

A proposal almost universally opposed by most party figures – save for Sir Peter Soulsby – just a few weeks ago was suddenly gaining support in the run-up to this week’s vote.

Why? Everything in politics happens for a reason. Whispers began that some sort of deal had been done.

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Some have asked: “Why would Peter Soulsby want to be mayor of Leicester? He’s an MP is Parliament on a chunky salary.”

Because it would make him the second most powerful directly elected politician in the country, and the most powerful politician Leicester has ever had.

Expect an elected mayor’s salary to quickly rise, too. The workload is much more significant than that of council leader – an independent pay panel will no doubt find – further down the line, before hiking the salary.

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To ram through a decision before the December 31 deadline, and avoid the plan biting the dust, a consultation must be carried out. It needs to be raised as an issue at three full council meetings before a decision can be made. The first to start the consultation, the second to hear the results, and the third to rubber-stamp any decision.

Colin Hall’s stance on the emergency meeting – he was still rightly or wrongly concerned about constitutional issues – was blocking the leadership’s attempt to start the consultation.

Without the meeting, the plans of the party’s influencers would be scuppered.

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A brief word of background here. Colin Hall is one of the Labour councillors who is against the elected mayor idea.

In the past, he hasn’t seen eye-to-eye with Soulsby, the current favourite to win any mayoral election.

“He sees Soulsby as partly responsible for his years when he wasn’t on the council,” one of his colleagues told me.

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The situation culminated with a day of arm-twisting on Thursday. Allies of Veejay say he had to step up and show leadership.

Whether he’s acted rightly or wrongly in the past 24 hours, no-one can argue that he showed leadership. He also showed a ruthless streak, which could come in handy during any mayoral election.

Formidable whip Barbara Potter was dispatched to persuaded the Lord Mayor to change his mind.

Those close to Veejay admitted that they could easily circumvent the mayor by asking four councillors to sign a document forcing a meeting to be held. But there was never any plan to do that. It would have been embarrassing and signalled a crippling weakness in Veejay’s authority.

“Every option is open if we don’t get our way on this.” one party high-flyer confided. Hours of silence then ensued.

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At 4pm my mobile-phone buzzed with a text. “It’s all back on. Emergency meeting is on November 19. Now we’re moving…”