EDITORIAL : THE GUARDIAN, UK

        

Elected mayors: Where Leicester leads

Will the prospect of being a hands-on mayor soon confer more political clout than the uncertain chance of a cabinet seat?

Amid the many elections due on 5 May – to the Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish devolved bodies, to local councils in much of England, plus the voting system referendum – do not overlook two other contests. In a month's time, voters in Leicester will elect a mayor, joining London and other cities with a directly elected chief. Since the Labour candidate in Leicester is the local MP Sir Peter Soulsby, the mayoral race has triggered a parliamentary byelection in Leicester South – also on 5 May.

These Leicester elections are of wider interest for two reasons. The first is that they mark the resumption, under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, of the previous Labour government's only intermittently successful enthusiasm for elected mayors. While some elected mayoralties – London pre-eminently – have been generally thought of as highly successful, others have not, or at least have failed to overcome the enduring opposition of their local government opponents. Stoke abolished its elected mayor three years ago, while Doncaster, after a bruising experience with two elected mayors, has begun a process which could end in abolition too. Over the past decade only about a third of more than 30 local referendums on whether to have elected mayors have resulted in a yes vote.

It is possible, nevertheless, that a tide may be turning in favour of elected mayors and that Leicester's decision, rather than Doncaster's, may be the shape of things to come. Under the localism bill, referendums on elected mayors are being targeted for May 2012 in a dozen of England's largest cities, including Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester and Newcastle. Yes votes in these cities could mark a decisive shift, which Labour, for all its efforts, failed to achieve. Ironically, local Labour opposition to the coalition could tip the scales. The attraction of fighting a city's corner with a high-profile leader in difficult times may outweigh even the most determined local enemies of change.

The Leicester race also says something about political careers. After the general election, Labour holds little power; its senior elected office-holder is currently the Welsh first minister, Carwyn Jones. If he wins in Leicester, Sir Peter's choice of local power over national opposition may tempt others. Already, the former cabinet minister Bob Ainsworth has said he might run if Coventry votes to elect a mayor. In other big cities other MPs, not just Labour ones, may also decide that the prospect of being a hands-on mayor of Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester confers more clout than the uncertain chance of a cabinet seat. An earlier generation would have thought this a perverse set of priorities; but a new one may start to see things differently.

Afghanistan: No endgame in sight

The key to ending the conflict in Afghanistan may be for us to stop thinking of it as a unified state

Nearly two years ago David Miliband, then foreign secretary, addressed a meeting of Nato confident that the right strategy was being pursued in Afghanistan. They would not force the Taliban to surrender, nor would they convert them. But he went on: "By challenging the insurgency … by building legitimate governance … the Afghan government, with our support, can prevail." Today Mr Miliband, backbench MP, is less certain – on any of those three counts. Last week he said the Taliban's numbers were growing, quoting an Isaf estimate of 35,000 full-time fighters; he challenged the idea that law and order could be delivered by the forces of a central state; and as for legitimate governance, there were two views of Hamid Karzai – a man uniquely qualified to unite his people, or its weakest link, with electoral fraud, corruption, cronyism and caprice sapping the strength of the Afghan government. Mr Miliband did not commit himself, but said it was incontestable that the Taliban are outcompeting the government in too many areas, dispensing their own rough but incorrupt justice. So while the west has set a date for the end of the war in 2014, Mr Miliband concluded that no political strategy yet exists to end the conflict.

Nor is he the only voice to doubt the relentless focus on military operations. A taskforce headed by Lakhdar Brahimi, former UN special representative for Afghanistan, and Thomas Pickering, former US undersecretary of state, said the current policy of reintegration may peel away small units of the Taliban, but would never provide the political resolution that peace would require. That could only be done by a settlement which would allow representation of the Taliban in central and provincial governments; the determination of the proper role of Islamic law in regulating dress, behaviour and the administration of justice; the protection of women's rights; the incorporation of Taliban fighters into the security forces; the severance of their ties with al-Qaida; and a guaranteed withdrawal of foreign forces.

All this comes late in the day. The western intervention is now longer than the Soviet one. But three years from the date set for withdrawal, no political component to that deadline exists. Nor is there a unified view in Washington about how to achieve it. With the Taliban pushed as a major presence out of Helmand and Kandahar, self-congratulation and self-doubt fill the air in roughly equal portions. The surge of US troop numbers is at its peak, but everyone is bracing themselves for another year of ferocious bloodshed, as the Taliban merely switch tactics from roadside bombs to suicide bombings and softer targets. Instead of fighting its way to the negotiating table, the US troop surge may simply be sawing the legs off it.

There is no dearth of creative ideas for an end to this conflict. But Washington may not be as powerful as it thinks in the endgame. A former UN negotiator involved in the Geneva agreements on the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, Giandomenico Picco, said in a paper that we may have to abandon the idea of Afghanistan as a centrally governed nation state – a fallacy shared by the Soviets, the Taliban and the west. Its porous borders could only be guaranteed by a regional summit of the countries that effect them – Pakistan, India, Iran and Saudi Arabia. Everyone seems to have forgotten Riyadh's influence on Islamabad. And including Iran as a regional power in a forum, unconnected to the nuclear issue, could also be a way of breaking that deadlock.

US generals believe salvation lies in an Afghan National Security Force, 305,000 strong. They cling to the hope that an Afghan state will endure their departure. After decades of war, both remain untested assumptions. Nato could still avoid an ignominious exit, but as things stand the one staged by the Soviets, on whom history has poured such scorn, may end up being veritably ordered in comparison.

In praise of... Mike Leigh

The big mistake people make with Mike Leigh is to simplify him into caricature; he is much too various for that

The big mistake people make with Mike Leigh is to simplify him into caricature; he is much too various for that. He is the man who turned London into his own film set, so that to wander around the capital is to think of Naked, Happy-Go-Lucky, Secrets & Lies – yet he is a Salford boy. And of course his work is so distinctive in both focus and style that almost everybody knows what you mean by a "Mike Leigh film" – yet he famously creates his dramas through extensive improvisation and rehearsal. He is the angry socialist who sets conservative teeth on edge – yet his early and later work focus much more on the personal than the polemical. In short, Mike Leigh is a writer and director who zigs when you expect him to zag, who escapes easy pigeonholing by dint of squirming too much. Those who still think of Leigh as the poet laureate of anti-Thatcherism should catch the revival of his 1979 play Ecstasy, recently transferred to London's West End. Some of the classic Leigh elements are there: set in a bedsit in Kilburn, it features a fascinating argument about immigration and its impact on jobs (some things in Britain don't change). But the real theme of the play is loneliness: how people can be lonely even in others' company – and how they try to dress it up. It is not all bleak: the play studies a marriage seemingly sustained by booze – yet which somehow works. But most of all it is tender, with the central character, Jean, depicted as a gifted, interesting woman afloat on her own regret. It is not classic Leigh – but is another Leigh classic.