In A Pickle

Eric Pickles is allowing councils to revert to the traditional committee system. If anything, he should require that. Yet he is also pressing ahead, at the behest of the Lib Dems, with directly elected mayors in the 12 largest English cities. Why?

And why do the Lib Dems want this? Who is running their party? The municipally entrenched activist base? Or the Westminster Village think tank adolescents, who have never even run their own baths? By no means only a question for the Lib Dems, of course.