Metro mayors and devolution deals

This paper examines the recent trend in English local government to introduce directly-elected mayors. This is a relatively recent emergence, with the creation of the position of London Mayor in 2000 seeing the first such position. In the years following, however, the UK Government has made numerous attempts to introduce the model more widely across the country with little success. Despite the Government’s case for the model, there is little popular democratic support and referendums have generally seen the model rejected. New reforms, though, in 2016 see the introduction of directly elected mayors at the Combined Authority level, these being introduced without referendums. This article examines the development of the model in England and offers an analysis.