London Banter - View Single Post - Semi-OT - Liberal Democrat mayoral nomination & transport pledges

Tim Roll-Pickering · September 3rd 11, 09:48 PM posted to uk.transport.london

wrote:

I dread to think what will happen if we ever get regional government
- whatever one may think of special advisors going into safe
Westminster seats they do have political knowledge and talent but are
unlikely to stand for regional assemblies. Anyone fancy a chamber
full of county councillors who fancy a nice sinecure?

Don't be quite so dismissive about councillors. Many MPs once had that
role
and some in all parties are very good. My present MP was a County
Councillor
until 2009. I'm sure he'll go far.

There are good ones who are drawn to Westminster and good ones who are
unlikely to ever stand for it but the question I raised is would they be
drawn to devolved assemblies? It's a question that needs to be addressed
seriously (albeit rather OT for this newsgroup) before new bodies and
elections are held. When the London Mayoral referendum was held back in 1998
the party introducing it took the official line of "we are discussing
creating the post, not who will be our candidate for it" which in hindsight
has proved a mess because nobody was really stopping to ask just whether or
not the culture was there that would produce the kind of candidates
envisaged.

And then there are the devolved Parliaments and Assemblies, where a common
complaint is that the non-nationalist parties are generally sending their
high profile best talent to Westminster and, with some individual
exceptions, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay are left with B-list talent (or C-list
when they suffer a reversal that replaces a load of constituency members
with listers). English regional assemblies would be even less attractive.