In his recent article in The Mail (Feb 1, 2026), Ryan Turbidy talks about directly elected mayors and their potential to move cities forward looking at Andy Burnham, John Moran and newly elected Mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdan amongst others.

I’VE ALWAYS been intrigued by city may­ors. An odd open­ing state­ment for sure but in recent years, it feels to me as though we could take a leaf out of the may­oral exper­i­ences of New York, Lon­don and indeed Lim­er­ick.

Cit­ies can be sprawl­ing and unruly with bor­oughs and coun­cils aplenty but this can lead to a dilu­tion of power and there­fore respons­ib­il­ity. So when people come look­ing for a head, there are many people point­ing in count­less dir­ec­tions hop­ing that the blame will land on any of the many desks where decisions are made. So, why have plenty of people to blame (or, dare I say it, admire) when you could have just the one? I don’t really under­stand the may­oral sys­tem in Dub­lin but essen­tially, the chains of office are handed around the vari­ous parties and who­ever gets the job has a short stint in the Man­sion House before being swiftly replaced by the next per­son.

Some may­ors make a big­ger impact than oth­ers. Some are like heat-seek­ing mis­siles to a photo op and oth­ers get the job done but in a more dis­creet man­ner. Either way, it’s all very sym­bolic really and doesn’t carry any of the polit­ical heft car­ried by one per­son/one vote elec­tions for a mayor who has the people’s author­ity to run a city for a fixed term of office with a man­date to make tough decisions for the good of that city.

Look at New York where Zohran Mam­dani, top, a rank out­sider, stormed to the Gracie Man­sion (their ver­sion of the Man­sion House) with a blis­ter­ing win over the estab­lish­ment can­did­ates. He’s barely in the door and is already a house­hold name whose future road might well lead him to the White House.

In Lon­don, the may­ors are house­hold names. Who can for­get Boris John­son who des­pite later mis­de­mean­ours was widely regarded as being a very good mayor. The cur­rent incum­bent, Sadiq Khan, is also very well known, a fact aided by Don­ald Trump’s reg­u­lar jibes at him on social media.

This week, the biggest story in the UK was about Andy Burnham, centre, the mayor of Greater Manchester. He had hoped to go back into the UK par­lia­ment with a view to maybe launch­ing a lead­er­ship bid against his party leader, Keir Starmer.

As it hap­pens, the Labour top brass blocked Burnham’s effort to run in an upcom­ing by-elec­tion and so he had to return to the ‘job that I love’. That line drew much scep­ti­cism from a pre­vi­ously ador­ing elect­or­ate who are now ask­ing ques­tions as to the mayor’s com­mit­ment to his day job.

Closer to home, we can look with admir­a­tion at Lim­er­ick whose 829th mayor is also the first dir­ectly elec­ted holder of that office in a mus­cu­lar move for demo­cracy that puts one cit­izen in charge of the city, thereby stream­lin­ing decisions, blame and appre­ci­ation, depend­ing on the qual­ity of the job done. John Moran, bot­tom left, won that elec­tion in 2024 and judging by his Ins­tagram account, he appears to be very act­ive and I pre­sume/hope, very effect­ive.

As we’re two years into that exper­i­ment of sorts, it’s time to give other cit­ies and their cit­izens a chance to elect a mayor. I have a strong belief that a demo­crat­ic­ally elec­ted mayor of Water­ford, Gal­way, Cork and Dub­lin could take these beau­ti­ful cit­ies to new heights in the crit­ical areas of hous­ing, trans­port and tour­ism.

The may­ors would be the pub­lic faces of their cit­ies and would rep­res­ent these places at home and abroad and they could meet to exchange ideas on how to improve the lot for their cit­ies.

This is all before we get to the unima­gin­ably enjoy­able elec­tions that would be run to choose the newly-min­ted may­ors. It’s food for thought and I’m ready for the rumble!