So what’s the process by which Birmingham might get an elected mayor then? Because however many times I read through the snappily titled ‘Draft Communities and Local Government Structural Reform Plan’ I still can’t quite figure out how it’s going to work and the usually helpful people at CLDG are not answering my emails.

Power, according to the Plan, will be taken away from Whitehall and put into the hands of people and communities. And the Localism Bill, the mechanism for this huge transfer of power, will pave the way for 12 cities to have elected mayors from May 2012. So, Birmingham could get a (political) mayor in less than two years time.

But what about the referendum? Well that, it appears, is to come afterwards, perhaps a year or two after the first mayors are elected. It will be a ‘confirmatory’ referendum and contrary to what I’m sure most people are expecting, the ’in favour’ threshold could very well be set much lower than 50%. The government, it appears, is keen to avoid the embarrassment of Labour‘s Regional Assembly referenda, an exercise in the transfer of power which spectacularly failed to ignite public interest.

My guess is that the current leaders in these 12 cities will be renamed mayors in 2012, and that an election won’t take place for a good few years afterwards, certainly not until after a referendum regarding the new posts. All should become clearer in November, when the groundwork for the Bill is done and ’options’ are developed for the transition to mayors. It’s starting to look more and more, though, that Birmingham will get an elected mayor regardless of whether we actually want one or not. Which is not quite the localism that many of us would have had in mind.