Government
On 1 April 1997, Leicester City Council became a unitary authority, local government up until then having been a two-tier system with the city and county councils being responsible for different aspects of local government services (a system which is still in place in the rest of Leicestershire). Leicestershire County Council retained its headquarters at County Hall in Glenfield, just outside the city boundary but within the urban area. The administrative offices of Leicester City Council are in the centre of the city at the New Walk Centre and other office buildings near Welford Place. Some services (particularly the police and the ambulance service) still cover the whole of the city and county, but for the most part the two councils are independent.
After a long period of Labour administration (since 1979), the city council from May 2003 was run by a Liberal Democrat/Conservative coalition under Roger Blackmore, which collapsed in November 2004. The minority Labour group ran the city until May 2005, under Ross Willmott, when the Liberal Democrats and Conservatives formed a new coalition, again under the leadership of Roger Blackmore.
In the local government elections of 3 May 2007, Leicester’s Labour Party once again took control of the council in what can be described as a landslide victory. Gaining 18 new councillors, Labour polled on the day 38 councillors, creating a governing majority of +20. Significantly however, the Green Party gained its first councillors in the Castle Ward, after losing on the drawing of lots in 2003, though one of these subsequently resigned and the seat was lost to Labour in a by-election on 10 September 2009. The Conservative Party saw a decrease in their representation, whilst the Liberal Democrat Party was the major loser, dropping from 25 councillors in 2003 to only 6 in 2007.
In the local government elections of 5 May 2011, Labour won 52 of the city's 54 seats, with the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats winning one seat each.
Leicester is divided into three Parliamentary constituencies, all controlled by the Labour Party : Leicester East, represented by Keith Vaz, Leicester South, represented by Jon Ashworth, and Leicester West represented by Liz Kendall. In April 2011 the then Leicester South MP Sir Peter Soulsby left the House of Commons to seek election as Mayor of Leicester.
On 5 May 2011, Peter Soulsby became the first directly elected Mayor of Leicester.
Read more about this topic: Leicesterians
Famous quotes containing the word government:
“I heartily accept the motto, “That government is best which governs least”; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe,—”That government is best which governs not at all”; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am really sorry to see my countrymen trouble themselves about politics. If men were wise, the most arbitrary princes could not hurt them. If they are not wise, the freest government is compelled to be a tyranny. Princes appear to me to be fools. Houses of Commons & Houses of Lords appear to me to be fools; they seem to me to be something else besides human life.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“There is something to be said for government by a great aristocracy which has furnished leaders to the nation in peace and war for generations; even a Democrat like myself must admit this. But there is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with the “money touch,” but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers.”
—Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919)