With the Ken and Boris show about finish (no doubt a relief for the 85 per cent of the population that doesn’t live in London), it’s perhaps useful to reflect on the other London election occurring parallel to the mayoral one.

All 25 London Assembly members are up for their four-yearly election, although you’ll be forgiven if it hasn’t been the major talking point in your life. While the mayoral contest has sparked debate across the city, precious few have paid attention to who will represent them at a constituency level in the assembly. Yet assembly members (AMs) are supposed to have a key role in checking the power and performance of the mayor’s vast and considerable budget and responsibilities. So why is no one taking any notice of them?

The London Assembly’s primary role is to scrutinise the activities of the elected mayor of London, a role that to be fair it has performed adequately since its inception. By and large, AMs are pretty dedicated and hard-working politicians.
My own AM, Len Duvall, has been rated by that Labour-loving stable the Evening Standard as the hardest working in the capital. So why is my thinktank calling for their abolition?

Quite simply, we argue that scrutinising the mayor shouldn’t require 25 full-time politicians and that much of their work involves producing inconclusive or superfluous reports and investigations (though it has not been lost on some that it takes a certain cheek for a thinktank to accuse others of such!).

Instead of having a full-time assembly, we argue that the mayor of London would be best scrutinised by the 32 elected borough leaders in Greater London. Council leaders already offer highly visible leadership and are directly accountable to their local populous. Furthermore, through day-to-day interaction with their local communities, they would be best placed to offer first-hand guidance on the views and aspirations of ordinary Londoners.

We recommend establishing a London Leaders’ Council (LLC) of all elected council leaders in London, whose sole role would be to approve the mayor’s budget, to review his strategic plans and documents and to question the mayor, his staff and organsiations under the mayor’s control, namely Transport for London, the London Development Agency, the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority and the Metropolitan Police Authority.

Moreover, one common complaint from outer London boroughs is that they are often overlooked in terms of funding and attention by inner London boroughs, which are geographically and politically closer to the current mayor. To counter this accusation,
the mayor’s budget could only be passed by the LLC by a clear majority of councils from both inner and outer London. This would ensure that any mayor would have to take into account the interests of all areas of London and liaise with all London leaders, regardless of political denomination.

Some argue that this would put too much power in the hands of Conservative councils in London, who would use the opportunity to wreck the plans of a Labour mayor. I can’t rule this out, but were it to happen it would show that these councils are more interested in political posturing than effective governance, something that they might well suffer from at election time.

It would also allow Labour to show that they are serious about devolving government to bring it closer to people and offer a welcome shot in the arm to the role of council leaders and councillors, at a time when the party’s base in local government is so low.

London’s borough leaders are ready to step up to the plate and offer constructive scrutiny and effective oversight. By bringing them together with the mayor, local people will feel closer and more influential to their elected representatives. Better governance is hardly the most scintillating issue in London at the moment, but it remains one of its most pressing.