The five candidates stand up straight on the stage of the Albany Theater in Coventry, an Art Deco room a little too large for the audience, made up of around a hundred experts, civil servants, local elected officials or academics, real estate specialists and economic regeneration. This April 17, Andy Street, for the Conservatives, his main opponent, Richard Parker, for Labor, Siobhan Harper-Nunes, the Green candidate, Sunny Virk, the Liberal Democrat candidate, and Elaine Williams, from the far-right party Reform UK, engage in the very codified British exercise of hustings (hearings).
Two weeks before the local vote on May 2, the last major electoral test in the United Kingdom before the general elections (which will probably take place in the fall), during which thousands of mandates for municipal and regional elected officials are put back into play, the five are running for the post of mayor of the West Midlands, a region of 3 million inhabitants in the heart of England.
The position was created in 2017, like those of mayor of Greater Manchester (conurbation of Manchester) and Tees Valley (east of England), to restore power and consideration to former lagging industrial areas, economic and social, of the rest of the country. These regional mayors are conductors supposed to coordinate different communities and administrations. They have extensive prerogatives in terms of transport, training and even housing.
In the West Midlands, between Birmingham, Coventry and Wolverhampton, Andy Street has held the position for two terms. At 60, this former CEO of the department store chain John Lewis is an atypical conservative, a moderate who voted against Brexit in 2016. Energetic and efficient, he has until now escaped the strong unpopularity of his party, weighed down by the scandals of the Boris Johnson era and by the catastrophic mandate of Liz Truss.
Years of austerity
But this Tory baron risks falling victim to the weariness of the British, to whom all polls credit the desire to give Labor a chance after fourteen years of conservative power. According to one survey published on April 25 by the Redfield and Wilton firm, Andy Street is six points behind its only serious competitor, Richard Parker, a former member of the PwC accounting firm little known to the general public.
According to another, published on April 22 by the Savanta institute, Mr. Street remains three points behind his Labor opponent. If the current mayor stumbles on May 2, the British Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, risks finding himself in the sights of dozens of conservative MPs who, according to the British media, could want to replace him with a more radical, more radical elected official. able, they think, to save their seats in the general elections.
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