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

[email protected] · September 3rd 11, 10:57 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article ,
(Tim Roll-Pickering) wrote:

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.

I know what you mean about Holyrood and Cardiff. Labour got it right in 1999
when Donald Dewar forsook the UK Cabinet for Scottish First Minister. It was
tragic that he then died.

My views on London are coloured by a deep dislike of concentrating so much
in one pair of hands. It's a system seriously vulnerable to corruption and
not suitable for the UK.

--
Colin Rosenstiel