莱斯特新当选市长: Peter Soulsby

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根据报道，昨日选举结果出炉，莱斯特新当选市长为 工党候选人 Peter Soulsby。

另外全民公决否决了自民党赞助的AV（Alternative Vote）方案，自民党岌岌可危。

[来源 Leicester Mercury 5月7日]

A new era for Leicester and city's first directly-elected mayor - Mercury Opinion

Sir Peter Soulsby




Leicester and Sir Peter Soulsby step into a historic new era today.

The Labour man had been expected to win the race to become the city's first directly-elected mayor – and has done so with a huge majority.

His victory came on an extraordinary day which also saw Labour win all but two of the 54 seats on Leicester City Council in a massive landslide.

Sir Peter's triumph makes him Leicester's most powerful politician with a four-year term in office at the helm of the city council.

He now has unprecedented scope to develop and implement policies which will decide the future direction and fortunes of this great city.

The system of a powerful directly-elected mayor is a controversial one.

Its success, of course, largely depends on how well the individual who occupies that position does in the job.

So, Sir Peter faces a major challenge to make the post work and to meet the enormous weight of expectation which will inevitably surround him.

People will want to see real progress made over the next four years and rightly so.

We think that Leicester's voters have done the right thing by putting their faith in Sir Peter and that he is the right man to meet this challenge.

He is a highly experienced and able politician who knows the ropes at both local and national level, having previously served as leader of the city council and as the MP for Leicester South.

It is invaluable to the city that we have a man who knows his way round the corridors of power and who knows how politics works.

So, our congratulations go to Sir Peter on a well-deserved victory and our best wishes for a successful term in office.

We can assure him that the Mercury will give him every support in taking the city forward.

That does not mean we will not scrutinise and question as necessary; that is part of our role as a newspaper.

However, it is also our job to help make the city as successful as possible and we will do all we can towards this end.

During the mayoral campaign, we were also hugely impressed by the campaign of independent candidate and city businessman Rick Moore.

He is clearly admired and respected by many people in the city and we would like to see Sir Peter use him in some sort of advisory capacity.

We think that he can give the new administration a useful insight into how to help businesses prosper in Leicester.

So, we look forward to an exciting new era in Leicester. The rest of the country will be watching how this experiment in mayoral politics works out, as we are the largest city outside London to go down this route. We are optimistic.