Across the country over the last few days, dozens of councillors have been waking up to a new reality: leadership, whether of their groups, of political coalitions or as council leaders.
To some, the path to power was carefully orchestrated over many turns of the electoral cycle. Change came gradually. To others, it was anything but. In some places, the courtly dance of multi-party politics continues. Over the coming days and weeks council AGMs will come and go. And then the act of governing takes over in earnest.
It was Mario Cuomo who first observed that politicians campaign in poetry but govern in prose. It would be possible to quibble with this. Even so it speaks to an essential truth: that the realities of holding power require hard work and choices even tougher than those of running for office.
For new leaders more than for most of us, particularly in a period of political change, questions of prioritisation loom large. Where is continuity the priority? Where and what change is needed to secure the outcomes promised pre-election? Big choices lie ahead for which many leaders (and some officers) are ill prepared.
Not every important issue will sit at the top of the in-tray. Immediate crises will - necessitating decisions under pressure. But, as ever, the immediate risks crowding out what is, for the wellbeing of places everywhere, the important. We wrote about this in our paper Time to Get Serious, last year. One of the issues we wrote about, and which exemplifies the opportunities and challenges awaiting new leaders in this respect, is placemaking.
It is hard to imagine many issues further from the stuff of political leaflets than Economic Prosperity Boards, joint committees and labour market assessments. If sitting looking at economic data weren't gloomy enough – and economic data at the moment comes with a covering of dark clouds – what if it means sitting down and working with neighbouring leaders drawn from the parties you've just beaten at the polls? A challenge to explain that to your group!
The problem is that every day, local electorates travel to jobs, training, shops and bars in those very places over the borders where lie erstwhile opponents.
For leaders in the most mature polities this is nothing new. Across most of the North, the West Midlands and elsewhere, there are Combined Authorities – Cabinets in all but name – made up from leaders of different parties, often operating with a distributed leadership model of cooperation. Here the economic and social realities of inter-dependence between places trump the vagaries of electoral outcomes. More than that – in these and many other places – the legitimacy of working for the self-interest of your place means cooperating with neighbours for the greater good too. This, for many, is the defining act of local political statesmanship.
To some, a deal with neighbours is more palatable than doing a deal with a Government of a different persuasion towards the end of its mandate. ‘Why not wait?' runs the argument. The answer to that is also more prosaic than it is poetic. Neither the legislation which creates the range of economic possibilities nor the fiscal envelope are likely to be radically different for some years post-election. Leaders could be in for a very long wait for a better time. The wait for the best may just be the enemy of the good. And as many Labour leaders acknowledged privately post 2010, whatever the differences (not least on austerity) doing business with Conservative ministers on devolution of powers can sometimes be both easier and more fruitful. Of course, the impact of austerity in hollowing out much of local government, has also strengthened the imperative for collaboration.
The hard work of many of us on creating the conditions for the decentralisation of the English state is paying off. Ministers now find it harder to fall in behind an unthinking ‘Whitehall knows best' mentality. The trailblazer deals with the West Midlands and Greater Manchester create large fiscal envelopes and services responsibilities. That is because Mayors of different persuasions have worked with local leaders to show they can deliver.
Combined authorities elsewhere and emergent groups in other areas are working together. Their journeys and destinations may be different. But all are focused on the prize, understanding what they need to do for their areas, putting their politics at the service of their places across boundaries however counter-cultural it may seem to do so and working to get the best deal they can. None of this may sit atop the inbox for incoming leaders but that doesn't mean it isn't important. It is. It is more than that. The creation of an enduring settlement for places across the country is among the defining issues for this generation of incoming political leaders.
Mike Emmerich and Ben Lucas are founding directors, Alex Gardiner is director, and Patrick White is managing director of Metro Dynamics
@metrodynamics
