Why has the position of mayor of London attracted such a comical gallery of candidates: a serial adulterer and former second-hand car dealer; a novelist, fantasist and now (it seems) straightforward liar; a retired actress; a newt-collector with a record of political looniness; a former minister with a taste for risque jokes? "Formidable" and "heavyweight" are not the words that spring to mind when considering either the intellects or the political abilities of these people. No serious politician - with the possible exceptions of Frank Dobson, who was in any case a reluctant candidate, and Nick Raynsford, who had piloted the necessary legislation through the Commons and was therefore more or less obliged to act as if the mayoralty were the greatest liberation since the Magna Carta - has shown the slightest interest in the job. Jeffrey Archer's withdrawal has resulted only in a Tory stampede towards the exits.
The truth is that the position of London mayor does not have enough power to attract a figure of genuine substance. His or her only revenue-raising power will be through congestion charging, an untried tax of uncertain yield and one, moreover, available to the mayor only through Treasury grace and favour. The mayor will have no control over schools, local social security and healthcare as the New York mayor does (see John Lloyd's report here last week). Ken Livingstone is pilloried by the Prime Minister because he refuses to accept party policy on public-private financing for the Tube. His position is indeed ridiculous, since the financing method is laid down in the legislation that creates the mayor and assembly; parliament would need to pass a new act to allow his preferred bond scheme. But what else is a candidate to talk about? To millions of Londoners, the need for an improved Tube system is almost the only issue of current significance. To prohibit discussion of how it may come about is like holding a performance of Macbeth while forbidding all talk of regicide. This is why Lord Archer was in many ways an ideal candidate: a cheerleader and warm-up act, with minimal baggage on policy specifics, who could treat the mayoralty as he would a charitable entertainment gala. Shorn of real power, the position becomes attractive only to those who enjoy a celebrity ego-trip. It is essentially a job for a showman, who will conceal the reality behind a front of wit, cheek and enthusiasm. New Labour's fears about Mr Livingstone are not about anything he might actually do - that he might cause burglaries to rise, tourists to flee or trains to run even slower - but about how he might mock and denigrate Downing Street from across the water.
The point of elected mayors was to inject some glamour into local government, to create people who could speak up for their towns and cities. And the excitement generated by the London mayoral race shows that, in a superficial sense, those aims have been realised. But Whitehall has stopped short of doing anything that would also give an elected mayor some political clout. The fiasco in London betrays the damage that Tory centralisation did to the nation's political health. The only available candidates are Westminster politicians past their best; credible figures with a recent grounding in local politics simply don't exist.
None of this means that elected mayors are a bad idea; merely that they are a botched one. The danger is that when the various mayors, in London and elsewhere, prove ineffective, the idea itself is discredited. Local government means bad government, we shall be told; able people won't come forward for election; far better, if we need something done over a big urban area, to rely on Whitehall-appointed tsars, to create an action zone here, a task force there.
But what both the Livingstone and Archer episodes have done is to show that, when it comes to scrutiny of public policies and political personalities, there is no substitute for the polling booth. The prospect of a London election forced a proper public debate about the merits of the government's scheme for financing Tube improvements. Lord Archer had not been elected to anything since 1974, yet maintained his position in Conservative inner circles through three consecutive leaderships, providing a perfect example of how politicians use patronage if left to themselves. Only the prospect of his taking the party's flag into an election persuaded the Tory high command to move to eject him, without waiting, as it had always done in the past, to hear the excuses. That is the lesson of the past weeks: elections keep our political leaders honest.
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