This city's mayoral referendum has been a revealing exercise. It has also been truly dispiriting.

What a sour and joyless lot the No campaigners have shown themselves to be.

In today's society, no individual is expected to take the blame for anything. The concept of "the buck stops here" is considered inappropriate in our politically- correct world. Joint discussion and committee decisions are the norm.

So it is hardly surprising the idea of an all-powerful mayor who would take the praise for success as well as the blame for mistakes aroused enormous resentment among those who regard a firm decision as some kind of fascist aberration.

As I write, I do not yet know the result of the referendum but it is irrelevant to what I have to say.

We pride ourselves in Brighton and Hove on being dynamic and forward-looking, embracing change. That may be true for some of us but, as the referendum campaign progressed, it became clear it does not include all of us.

The Nos were driven by meanness, suspicion, resentment and fear.

The concept of actually paying a talented professional to take on the running of the city for a four-year term provoked the most astonishing, miserly responses.

I lost count of the times I heard the line: "Why should we pay all that money for a mayor out of our rates?"

The fact that the right mayor should save huge amounts of money by cutting costs, increasing efficiency and speeding up decision making completely eluded them.

Labour councillor Francis Tonks, joint chairman of the ludicrously misnamed Allies for Democracy, spearheaded his campaign by wanting to deny people their democratic right to vote for a mayor.

He argued for the old, undemocratic system of a council cabal making its own choice. And let's not take too seriously vague promises about scrubbing up the old ways to make them look new. A rather lugubrious old war-horse, he behaved like an early 19th Century Luddite in terms of wanting to obstruct progress.

He argued that an American style "city boss" may be all right in the States, but, because it was untried and untested here, we must not have it. This irrational fear of change pervaded the whole campaign.

It was also perverted by the suspicious nature of those sad souls who argued that a professional mayor would almost certainly become corrupt and probably finish up in jail.

My heart sank as I listened to the cheerless, negative banality of it all.

Whether they win or lose this referendum, these people represent a large proportion of those of us who live in Brighton and Hove.

I am still naive enough to be surprised there are so many with so little belief in the need for modernising change and who have so little excitement about grasping the opportunity when it is put before us.

What was becoming a city all about if it was not about faith in a stimulating new future?