Last week, it was reported that Luke Campbell, the Reform UK mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, has run into difficulty with the local government officials he oversees. Campbell is the first ever elected mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, and he was voted in during the surge of support enjoyed by Reform UK in the May local elections, which has shown no sign of abating in the three months since voters went to the polls.
However, despite a strong victory — eight percentage points clear of his nearest rivals, the Liberal Democrats — Campbell has been greeted with official obstructionism and dysfunction, according to reports in the Daily Telegraph. At the heart of the dispute is local protocol preventing Campbell from hiring trusted political advisers to support him and the officials’ attitude to working from home.
By blocking the appointment of political advisers, the officials in Hull and East Yorkshire Combined Authority — many of whom have been seconded from other parts of the civil service throughout the country — are essentially preventing an elected politician from carrying out his democratic mandate. While a certain level of tension between the political and official side of any government is to be expected — and it can be a productive tension — if any protocol forbids an elected mayor from appointing advisers or instructing officials to work in the office full time, the protocol must be scrapped. Why are they in office if they are unable to appoint their own political advisers to help them deliver their priorities?
Rules like this impede regular function of government and erode the value of the votes cast by the British people. The devolution of powers to elected mayors in England has been championed by both Labour and the Conservatives throughout the 21st century. What is the point of elected mayors if they are unable to conduct their mandate?
It is typical of the unhappy fudge that both major parties have created when it comes to the devolution that directly-elected mayors, each of which has a unique settlement and “devolution deal” with the central government, have little ability to improve the livelihoods of their voters. Campbell in Hull, for example, enjoys some authority over housing, planning and bus transport, but his executive action is hemmed in by various consent mechanisms, giving voting powers to other members of the combined authority, representatives of the local councils. This is different to the Mayor of London’s more expansive powers to run Transport for London, for example, or the Mayor of Greater Manchester’s formal authority over policing.
Devolution, as it stands, is opaque and confusing. It is characterised by overlapping jurisdictions, duplication of roles and ultimately the dilution of responsibility and accountability. The British people pay their taxes and cast their votes for new politicians, but little seems to change. Voters in Hull may wonder why they are even casting their votes, if the elected Mayor is unable to deliver his promises. Perhaps this is the way that central government prefers it — particularly if an anti-establishment party begins winning elections on a larger scale.
We have reached the end of the road for the current model of governance in Britain
Readers will note the similarity between this and the much-reported dysfunction in Whitehall, where civil servants working for the central government have been blamed for frustrating elected governments by blocking or delaying appointments and even threatening strike action to maintain generous working from home rules, regardless of productivity or delivery. What happens in Whitehall is being replicated in local government offices up and down the country, but with little public or media scrutiny.
We have reached the end of the road for the current model of governance in Britain. While the concept of a permanent and impartial civil service whose long-term stewardship complements the sharper political incentives of elected officials is nice on paper, it is proving impossible in the modern era.
Britain’s habit of sending elected ministers to run bureaucracies with only a handful of political advisers — in Campbell’s case the devolution deal allows for a sole appointment, and the council seems to be causing great difficulty over his choices — does not lead to good government anymore. The terms on which officials and elected politicians are serving are no longer in happy tension. They are often now totally at odds with one another. This is as true in the newly created combined authorities and mayoralties as it is in government departments which have existed since the age of sail.
Voters are putting their faith in outsider politicians like Campbell for a reason
Absent a total reorganisation of British governance, an easier solution to the problems which face politicians like Campbell and even the Cabinet Ministers in the Labour Government is to allow the greater appointment of political advisers and — crucially — private secretaries in ministerial offices. Private secretaries control the flow of information between ministers and the rest of the bureaucracy. They are incredibly influential officials and a good relationship between a private secretary and a minister is essential to the effective management of a department. While it is possible for this to work across the political-official divide, the incentives and accountability for politicians and civil servants are now so divergent that a new approach is required to unite them. Campbell, and even Sir Keir Starmer’s beleaguered ministers, would benefit from a more Australian approach to government, where almost the entirety of a minister’s office is made up of political appointees who serve the elected minister, rather than the permanent bureaucracy.
Voters are putting their faith in outsider politicians like Campbell for a reason. Unsurprisingly, they expect results. British democracy needs a system which can deliver them, otherwise its legitimacy in the eyes of the public will turn to dust.
