Toronto Mayoral By Election

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Amalgamation was perfectly logical given the massive expansion of Toronto since the 1970s and I've never seen a credible argument against the general principle, but it would have been a good idea to have converted the old municipalities into borough councils (effective just swapping around the power balance of what where then existing arrangements). It is also quite ridiculous to have such a large city with so few councillors: that's a state of affairs that positively encourages alienation from the electorate, though the public choice calculation amongst existing local politicians to prefer there to be very few of them is obvious enough.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In fact, an awful lot of municipal experts would argue the reverse: that amalgamated urban-rural city-county entities like present-day Ottawa are inane and simplistic forced marriages.  That is, to claim that 1000+ square miles extending well into farm and rural territory is an "ideal" size and setup for a city is like a 13-year-old boy viewing virtual sexbots as an "ideal" barometer for femininity...

In general it makes sense to cover the core of a metropolitan region with whatever your principal local authority happens to be, and the complete planning disasters that so many North American and, as it happens, Australian cities are apt to be demonstrates this nicely. But, yes, the 1990s fetish for the unitary authority (as it was/is called in Britain) is really very questionable, as they often end up being difficult to run to the point of being unmanageable, and as local politics often devolves into nasty conflict between different towns, suburbs or districts, all quite convinced that they're being screwed over to someone else's benefit.* A weak metropolitan authority for general coordination extending far out into the commuter belt (very unfashionable, but I maintain a fundamentally good idea: but it does have to cover a very wide area, otherwise it's pointless), a strong city council and weak boroughs for local representation and grassroots involvement in the political process strikes me as the best way of going about things, as a general rule.

_{*Toronto has, of course, provided examples of both the problems caused by metropolitan areas bursting their bounds, and of the problems caused by trying to solve this with a unitary authority!}

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Amalgamation has been a disaster and was purely conceived to keep progressives from running cities.

Did progressives run cities, though? Sometimes the inner urban core, but generally not a lot else, and that's not really as 'the city' when it's only a relatively small proportion of the population of the continuous built-up area as, by the 1990s, it usually was. Poverty of ambition there!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In the 1980s didn’t Margaret Thatcher dissolve the Greater London Council and put London under her direct rule just to prevent Ken Livingston from being mayor?

No: there was no Mayor of London at the time (the post was created in 2000) and when the GLC was abolished its powers were given the borough councils.¹ The political structure of the GLC was the standard British local government model, with the most senior political figure being the Leader of the Council (who was generally also the leader of the majority group on it).² The GLC had been a bête noir of Conservatives in the outer boroughs, especially those in local government, since its creation in the 1960s, and Margaret Thatcher was, of course, a Barnet MP. Livingstone's antics after he became Leader in 1981 (and also the manner by which he became Leader: he wasn't actually the Labour group leader during the 1981 elections, but instead couped him out immediately afterwards) The suggestion that it simply be abolished was encouraged by the fact that most of its various administrations really struggled (there were only two that could ever be described as reaching even a basic level of competence: the Labour administration headed by Bill Fiske between 1964 and 1967 and the Conservative administration of Sir Horace Cutler between 1977 and 1981), which meant that any public backlash could be expected to be (and was) limited. While they were at it, the Thatcher government got rid of the Metropolitan County Councils as well (on the grounds that they overspend ratepayers money etc), a move that provided useful cover for scrapping the GLC.

<sub>1. Apart from its role in education in inner London (it never had responsibility for education in the outer boroughs) through the Inner London Education Authority, which had a brief experience post-GLC as a directly elected body, before being dissolved itself.
2. A model that actually has its origins in London, where it was pioneered by none other than Herbert Morrison who led the London County Council (the predecessor to the GLC which covered the inner boroughs) in the 1930s.</sub>