Features / Politics
The end of Bristol’s mayoral model
There used to be a bicycle stand outside the main entrance to City Hall reserved for George Ferguson and painted in the same resplendent red as his trademark trousers. When Marvin Rees became mayor in 2016, the stand was unceremoniously removed.
It was a seemingly small decision for a mayor that still regularly cycled to his office on College Green from his former home in Easton but wanted it to be known that his administration was a completely clean break from what had gone before.
One of the first things that Marvin Rees did on becoming mayor was to remove the mayoral cycle bay at City Hall – photo: Bristol24/7
Rees later scrapped another Ferguson legacy slightly bigger than the bike stand: the ‘shovel-ready’ plans to build an arena next to Temple Meads. After these plans were finally cancelled by Rees in September 2018 much to the dismay of Ferguson, Rees said that his predecessor was “fighting to the death to save his greatest ever vanity project”.
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Today, a plaque remains on the blue Brock’s Bridge that was meant to connect Cattle Market Road to the new arena, informing passers-by that it had been named by Ferguson in 2016 just two months before he left office.
Legal & General’s current plans for Arena Island – now known as Temple Island – are for 500 new homes, two new office blocks, retail space, a hotel and conference centre. Over in Filton, “preparation and enabling work” at the Brabazon hangars finally got underway in March with the 19,000-capacity arena now due to open in early 2027 – with some naysayers still doubting that it will even happen at all.
George Ferguson at the unveiling of the name of Brock’s Bridge in March 2016, linking Cattle Market Road to Arena Island – photo: Bristol24/7
In just a few years, Ferguson went from Bristol’s first directly elected mayor to someone who helped campaign to successfully scrap the role. He told Bristol24/7 that “we have benefited in so many ways from having an elected city mayor, especially having chosen to have one by referendum. We have had a champion with an electoral mandate to represent the city. Bristol has gained greater attention nationally and globally; and has built on its reputation as an innovative, creative and welcoming city.”
But Ferguson added that a number of aspects of the mayoral model have not worked including “an expanded and highly party-politicised mayoral office since 2016; loss of a multi-party cabinet to unrepresentative single party control; (and) a criminal waste of public funds resulting from the ‘reviewing’ and/or trashing of previous plans” which he listed as the aforementioned Temple Island arena alongside residents’ parking, 20mph speed limits, Make Sunday Special and Cycling City. Rees pointedly said in his final State of the City address in March: “When I came in, the political debate was dominated by car parking and fun Sundays.”
Then-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn congratulates Marvin Rees the day after he was elected Bristol mayor in 2016 – photo: Bristol24/7
So why did Ferguson advocate for the scrapping of the mayoral model? “For the simple reason that we now have a metro mayoral system throughout the country, leaving us as an outlier, with both city and city region mayors, with no clarity of leadership. Bristol has expanded well beyond its boundary with much of its population and economic weight lying outside that boundary.
“We have the opportunity to create a strong Bristol and Bath city region led by a metro mayor of the calibre and authority of Greater Manchester’s mayor. However, it is sadly for other reasons that people voted to dispense with the Bristol mayoral system. They perceived it to be party politically hijacked and money wasting.”
Ferguson’s former assistant, Zoe Ruthven, said that she and Ferguson “both went into the mayoral experiment with open hearts and open minds. We refused to play politics or stoop to the time wasting, silly games many elected officials tend to play. Much as I enjoy The West Wing, local politics should be about putting local people first. Three and a half years is a very short time to make an impact, and there was a lot to do.
“The size and cost of the mayor’s office more than trebled once a Labour administration was installed, including political party appointees. I’m not sure what we could have done differently to try and secure the same resources but considering the resources available to us I am proud of what we achieved in such a short time.” (Rees’ chief of staff, Kevin Slocombe, was asked to contribute to this story.)
Marvin Rees and his chief of staff Kevin Slocombe in City Hall – photo: Uplands TV / Sam Gibson
Veteran Tory politician Richard Eddy said that both Ferguson and Rees “undoubtedly succeeded in stamping their personal identity on the council and provided more visible personal leadership for the city”. Eddy said that Ferguson in particular “reflected the more non-party city which is now Bristol and sought to encourage fresh ideas – rather than the tired tribal party-politics of Bristol Labour. His multi-party cabinet was a very public sign of this.”
Ferguson gave Conservative councillor and former mayoral candidate, Geoff Gollop, a cabinet position and held his first cabinet meeting in 2012 at The Park in Knowle West in order to try to open up local democratic decision-making; while Rees’ rainbow cabinet in 2016 included Tory councillor, Claire Hiscott.
But Eddy has never been a fan of the mayoral model, calling it “undemocratic, non-transparent and plays to the ego of the two mayors we have had. In short, it has all the shortcomings of politicians who develop a god-complex.”
Eddy added: “Ferguson had a shorter time in which to reshape Bristol and, as an independent, had none of the advantage of a political party’s backing. However, he continued to pursue the council’s anti-car policies, imposed Stalin-like residents’ parking zones on communities and started the disastrous Bristol Energy company which cost Bristol taxpayers almost £50m.
“Personally, I think Marvin Rees is the worst thing to happen to Bristol since the medieval Black Death. ‘Air Miles Marvin’ is typical of the worst of modern politicians in being in awe of their own ego, thin-skinned when it comes to criticism and mouthing platitudes rather than achieving meaningful change.
“Even by his own yardstick of boosting housing for Bristolians, he has dismally failed. And he hates the real Bristol which he derides as the ‘Brunel, bridges and balloons’ version of our rich multi-layered city history.”
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Read more: Rees: ‘The bridge, the Gorge and balloons are not central to my city’s identity’
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As mentioned, Ferguson’s rainbow cabinet of councillors from across the political spectrum was briefly adopted by Rees when he became mayor at the second time of asking in 2016 – one of the few ideas Bristol’s two elected mayors shared. But it was scrapped at the start of Rees’ second term in favour of cabinet members drawn solely from the Labour Party. A criticism of Rees is that he was too often surrounded by ‘yes people’, party colleagues who were unwilling to challenge him even in private and praised him effusively in public.
One councillor who has the unique distinction of being sacked from the cabinets of Ferguson and Rees is Mark Bradshaw, who was also Rees’ closest rival to securing Labour’s nomination for mayor back in 2015. Ferguson sacked Bradshaw via email after the Bedminster councillor opposed selling off the council’s stake in Bristol’s port, while Rees sacked Bradshaw – according to Bradshaw – over disagreements about the future of transport in the city, with Bradshaw’s plans not ambitious enough.
Bradshaw first found out about his second sacking after it was leaked to the press, before being officially told in a meeting with Rees and Slocombe. Rees then briefly took on the cabinet transport portfolio himself and as his time as mayor reaches its conclusion, he remains committed to a mass transit system for Bristol with underground sections of railway.
Marvin Rees’ first cabinet was drawn from Labour, Lib Dem, Tory and Green councillors (Mark Bradshaw is back row, far left) – photo: Bristol24/7
Bradshaw was twice elected by his fellow Labour councillors to join Ferguson’s first cabinet and later appointed by Rees, and he praised both men who sacked him for each retaining the council tax reduction scheme among other successes of their respective terms. Bradshaw said that his time serving in the two different administrations “were very different experiences”.
“I feel that he (Rees) had a number of preconceived ideas about transport that anybody coming into office without experience of being a councillor would probably have as well, about the simplicity, as it might appear, of the transport challenge… The simple, ‘let’s just fix it and maybe build some tunnels and so on’.
“I just saw a different world which was about making it easier for people to get a bus, make it easier for them to plan a journey, make it easier for them to walk and cycle in a safe way, easier to get a train, and integrating rail and bus so you use the same tickets, all of these things are not out of this world but they are really challenging.”
After having represented Bedminster ward since 2006, Bradshaw will not be standing in this month’s local elections. Rees’ two deputy mayors Asher Craig and Craig Cheney (who were both asked to contribute to this story) are also not seeking re-election as well as cabinet members Helen Holland and Nicola Beech.
Will George Ferguson and Marvin Rees go down in history as Bristol’s only two elected mayors? – photo: Bristol24/7
The benches of the council chamber will soon look very different, with Mary Page hoping to be among the Green majority despite having previously been a Lib Dem mayoral candidate. “I stood for mayor because I thought I had the skills and attitude to enable people to help themselves to make their lives and their communities better. Looking back I can now see how I was also tempted by what I saw as an idea of benign dictatorship of the mayoral role,” said Page, one of the Greens’ three candidates for Avonmouth & Lawrence Weston ward on May 2.
Page was one of the leading voices in the campaign to scrap the mayoral model. So what are her hopes for the untested committee system? “I recently said in a ward forum that I hope that the new committee system will leave more space and resources for the hundreds, possibly thousands of ordinary people across Bristol who are taking small but incredibly selfless acts to make their community better.
“Those who create friends of parks, libraries, hospitals. The people who put on after-school or breakfast clubs. The people running community fridges in local hubs or food banks, sports clubs, cultural activities, the Civic Society and all the absolutely amazing events across our amazing city. That’s the legacy of the It’s Our City Bristol project, that we want more people to be allowed and enabled to take part, because it is our city, not the mayor’s.”
Mary Page (centre)and other campaigners celebrate as Bristol decided to scrap the mayoral system following the referendum in May 2022 – photo: Bristol Post
Page’s Green colleague, Tony Dyer, another former mayoral candidate, said that the committee system “should be able to encourage a wider level of cross-party, public and other stakeholder involvement”. Dyer added: “In addition, I believe that under the present system it is too easy for cross-party scrutiny of decision-making to be sidelined and largely ignored. No single party has a monopoly on knowledge and/or experience and sometimes decisions have been made that have not been widely exposed to critique from a position that is not beholden to those proposing the decision to be made.
“Under the committee model, scrutiny is embedded into the policy committees making the decision, and ensuring that works effectively will be one of the key tests of the new system. I have seen much speculation that the committee model will slow down decision making, and we will need to monitor that, but I have also seen very slow decision making under the mayoral model and often because subjective decisions made within a small group that should have been challenged early in the decision making process have not had that challenge leading to delays and often considerable impacts on the cost of delivery.”
Bristol will still have a mayor after May: our historic but largely ceremonial lord mayor, who will be Andrew Varney if he gets re-elected as Lib Dem councillor for Brislington West. “For some time, a lot of Bristolians have been baffled by the number of mayors in our city,” said Varney. “We currently have a metro or regional mayor, a city mayor and a lord mayor. Indeed, if you write an email to the lord mayor’s office, you are asked to check you have contacted the right mayor!… If I get re-elected in May, it will be my very great honour and privilege to represent our fine city.”
The region’s metro mayor, Dan Norris, never misses an opportunity for self-promotion despite the West of England Combined Authority being effectively put into a form of special measures by Westminster due to political infighting. Norris also harbours ambitions of returning to Westminster, having recently been shortlisted as one of Labour’s three possible candidates for the new constituency of North East Somerset & Hanham.
In recent communications, WECA’s name has been subtly changed to the ‘West of England Mayoral Combined Authority’. Bristol may soon no longer have a city mayor but while still metro mayor, Norris looks set to accentuate his own role as the Bristol region’s foremost elected political representative when Rees’ reign and Bristol’s mayoral model comes to an end.
Main photo: Bristol24/7
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