On May 3rd, Nottingham voted on whether to have a directly elected mayor to run the city.

57% voted to keep the current system and 43% voted for a mayor.

Nottingham Lib Dems campaigned for a ‘no’ vote because it would have been too much power for one person to have, with nobody to keep an eye on them.

The Nottingham Labour party also wanted a ‘no’ vote but they were criticised for appealing to people’s fears. They put a leaflet out saying that a ‘yes’ vote could leave us with a racist mayor because the BNP and English Defence League had both backed the ‘yes’ campaign.

Lib Dem Focus Team member Tim Ball said “The Nottingham Labour party should not see the referendum result as a vote of confidence in how they run the city. The reason many people wanted a mayor was because the Labour party has too much control over the Council, and because of some of the recent scandals involving the Labour party and it’s councillors.”

Thanks for voting.

Local campaigner Alex Foster said “Thank you to everyone who voted. We’d have liked a better turnout for the referendum: only one in four people voted. But the result clearly shows that Nottingham people agreed with us that a mayor was a bad idea”.

Nine out of the ten councils with referendums on elected mayors voted against it. Only Bristol wanted to bring in a mayor.