It’s a Proper Job: Process, People and Power in an English City

Sir Peter Soulsby, the Leicester South MP since 2005, resigned from Parliament to fight for what he called ‘a proper job’: the elected mayor of Leicester City. That office was elected on 5th May 2011, but before that event a series of political interactions and actions had to be taken and shifting alliances had to be formed to generate a critical mass of support to change the governing arrangements of the city council to an elected mayor. The paper explores the way existing patterns of political behaviour and preferences were altered to lead to the introduction of the new office – a model of governance which was not universally accepted in the context of this case, nor local government as a whole. The paper examines how, through a careful, if condensed, process of preference shaping and the use of context, timing and authority building political leaders can construct a system of government that matches a personalised agenda for further political action.