I’ve posted before about New Labour’s obsession with the “strong man” approach to leadership and how almost inevitably it is a man, so I was interested to see this article, ‘RoboCop ready to fight again for job he does not believe in‘, while catching up on my reading.

Ray Mallon, the elected mayor of Middlesbrough, apparently doesn’t think much of the elected mayor model. According to the article after meeting one of the other elected mayors he realised that “the mayoral model is open to abuse by the power-crazy”.

He says;

“If you get a mayor who was power-mad, he could bring a town down or a city, so you can see I am not completely sold on the elected mayor idea. It works here because I like to think I am sane – though people who usually say that aren’t.”