How mayoral elections can strengthen the Tories

The most important political changes are those that will not be reversed. I think that both directly elected mayors and police commissioners fit this mould. I can’t imagine voters choosing to cede the ability to hold power to account that these positions
will give them. Tellingly, more people in London now favour independence for the capital than want to scrap the office of mayor.

Police commissioners and mayors also provide the Conservatives with a massive opportunity to rebuild the party in urban Britain, as I argue in my column this week. The Conservatives have little chance of gaining overall control of the council in, say, Leeds. But they could win a mayoral poll there. As Boris Johnson has demonstrated in London, charismatic Conservative mayoral candidates can reach parts of the electorate that the national party cannot.

One of the biggest obstacles to the Conservatives winning a majority is that 42 per cent of people would never even think of voting for a Tory candidate.