‘What election?’: West Midlands mayoral race struggles to overcome apathy
Rural communities seem to resile from the idea of supra-county arrangements and mayors. This article certainly puts the West Midlands in a brighter spotlight than many of us could dream of achieving for our rural causes. Reason to think again? or perhaps not?? It tells us:
There is another narrative that makes the mayoral job look much tougher. “Central Birmingham would pass for Boston, Massachusetts, its poorer outskirts for the less fashionable districts of Bucharest,” wrote the Economist recently. According to this counter-narrative, beyond the glitz of real-estate projects – such as the one behind the Town Hall boldly called Paradise – is the very hell of broken Britain itself. That’s not to mention Coventry, Solihull, Wolverhampton, Walsall, West Bromwich and Dudley, all of which fall under the mayoral ambit.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s recent report Inclusive Growth in the West Midlands: An Agenda for the New Mayor pointed out that homelessness in the West Midlands is nearly double the national average. Three in 10 kids here grow up in poverty. There’s such a regional skills shortage that employers report 18% of vacancies cannot be filled in Birmingham and Solihull, while the figure is 28% in the Black Country (across England it is 22%)