At a press launch in London today, former Mayor of London, Ken
Livingstone, and US Conference of Mayors CEO, Tom Cochran, revealed why
they are throwing their weight behind a new body of mayors, which aims
to transform global governance.
Ken Livingstone, who set up the C40
(then C20) network of cities when he was Mayor of London, said that
national governments had become almost too unwieldy to manage and now
were headed by business people, lawyers or PR specialists, who had not
run a local council or enjoyed experience of local government and
consequently were not best prepared to run something of incredible
complexity as national government. He urged mayors to get behind the the
concept of a parliament of mayors to achieve better global governance
for all.
“This is not a mad power grab by mayors but it is recognising that
the delivery of services of the state are much easier to deal with at
the local level,” said Livingstone. “Mayors have to see day-to-day that
their cities are running and it is time to recognise that we need to
restructure governments across the world.”
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