Gateshead Council is 45 years old. There have been 45 appointments of mayors of the borough made in that time. Every single one of them has been Labour. Gateshead is one of the few councils that does not rotate the mayoralty around the parties represented on the Council (in Gateshead two parties have councillors - Lib Dems and Labour). To be fair to Labour in Gateshead, the Leader of the Opposition does have a role to play - but that is simply to second the vote of thanks at the annual council meeting to the outgoing (Labour) mayor. But no longer. I made it clear to Labour that I was no longer willing to do this as Leader of the Opposition if there is no rotation of the mayor.
We have been told by Labour that they have a monopoly of the mayoralty because the mayor is "non-political". Indeed, because we raised this issue, Labour accused us of politicising the Mayor. They were not pleased at the annual meeting when we put forward our own candidate for mayor, Cllr John McClurey. Martin Gannon, Labour leader of the Council, even interrupted me when I was nominating John to have a go at us for spoiling their little Labour jamboree.
The new mayor is not exactly new to the role. Lamesley Councillor Michael Hood has already served once as mayor. As for his Labour deputy, Dot Burnett, she was only elected as a councillor in May last year.
On the plus side, the last mayor, Jill Green, ended her term of office by crashing to defeat in the local elections this year. We took her seat with a majority of 500. The mayor in 2016-17, Allison Thompson, lost her seat to the Lib Dems last year. I think it's time to dust down those campaign plans for Lamesley ward!
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