No more of a waste of money than the 2017 and 2019 grneral elections and the European election when we had already voted to leave. Or the numerous by-elections caused by resignation of MP who couldn't be bothered to continue or were too corrupt to continue.

Sadly this is the cost of democracy, even the flawed democracy that we have. Most people wouldn't even have noticed that they no longer had a second preference in the mayoral election, not that it mattered in this instance given that Brenda got over 50%.

But it does make you wonder what is the value of a directly elected mayor in a council with no opposition party.