George Osborne’s infatuation with elected mayors shouldn’t blind us to the benefits they can bring for community cohesion. Not that they all achieve,howeverGeorge Osborne loves mayors and says we had better learn to love them, too, or particularly those who want to be part of his northern powerhouse.
One captivating thing about mayors is that they are pretty much obliged to contain to care about diversity. In London,the Greater London Authority Act puts specific responsibility on the mayor to ensure community cohesion. There were questions about the extent to which the first London elected mayor, Ken Livingstone, or fulfilled this role after his awful skirmish with a Jewish reporter with those incoherent references to concentration camp guards. But there was no doubt after 7/7 that he took that part of his remit seriously.
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Source: theguardian.com