From May 2023, the council will return to a leader and cabinet model after councilors voted 51 to 18 to scrap the elected post, which sat alongside the role of lord mayor and city district metro mayor of Liverpool. Liverpool’s current mayor, Joan Anderson, who was elected last year, had campaigned on whether Liverpool needed the role and promised to hold a referendum if chosen to replace Jo Anderson, who resigned amid a fraud investigation. Instead, the council opted to run a less expensive public consultation, which had a response rate of just 4% of the city’s population. Labor councilors were criticized for appearing to go against the public, with 40.9% voting to retain the mayor’s role, 32.9% opting for a committee model and 23.6% preferring to have a council leader. Steve Radford, the Liberal leader on the council, told Labour: “You say we’re going to vote for the least popular option and after asking the people of the town, we don’t give a damn what they think.” Councilor Paul Brant argued that it was not a binding vote and that 56.5% of people did not vote for the mayoral system. He told the council: “This was not a first vote, we went out seeking the views of the wider public. I can count on the fingers of my hands the number of times governance issues have been brought up and this discussion has been brought up with me on the doorstep. “The reality is that the consultation was unclear, its results were unclear, it would not pass the test that a credible polling organization would impose to be a representative sample of opinion across the city.” Subscribe to First Edition, our free daily newsletter – every morning at 7am. BST He said the wealthiest wards had a 14% turnout, while the poorest had a 3% response rate. He added: “We don’t have a representative slice of the population of the city of Liverpool with this process, so we have to do the best we can with the material we have. The choices we face today, we have to do the best we can.” The decision comes after government-appointed inspectors were brought in in March last year to partly oversee the council following a damning inspection report that found allegations of bullying, “dubious” deals and “jobs for the boys”.
