A forum for discussion of UK constitutional change.

I don't think regional English assemblies will be attractive enough for people to want to pay for them, keep up to date on their activities, and vote for them. I think failures like AV and Prescott's regions show that voter attention is a very scarce resource. (I knew somebody who said he couldn't be bothered to rank candidates in order and didn't want those who did to have a stronger voice than him!).

I think Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone show that a single individual with executive powers can capture enough voter attention to make a local executive run by them work. I think that a Mayor (possibly running an entire region) could work. The obvious risk from this is that regional one party states turn into regional dictatorships - cue the English Rob Ford, or look at the history of the Stormont government.

To counter this I propose that central government run an Ombudsman system to which the public have direct access. In particular, I propose that voters elect both a Mayor and a Deputy Mayor, and the centrally run Ombudsman should have the power to replace the Mayor with the Deputy Mayor.