News / Politics
Committee system era starts with shouting at City Hall
Seventy-nine seconds was all it took between Bristol’s outgoing lord mayor to close his introductions from the dais with a plea to councillors to “please treat each other with due courtesy, tolerance and respect” and for that to go completely out of the window.
The inauguration ceremony for the historic role of lord mayor of Bristol, the city’s ceremonial ‘first citizen’, is – or should be – a celebration, with friends and family of the incoming postholder watching with pride in their finest glad rags from the public gallery of the council chamber.
It is unusual for politics to get in the way of the occasion at the annual meeting of full council but this year, one early barbed comment from Lib Dem group leader and former lord mayor, Jos Clark, popped that bubble.
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Clark made a thinly veiled dig at Labour for wrongly allowing Deborah Vittori, one of its successful local elections candidates, to stand at the polls in Horfield ward on May 2.
Vittori was disqualified from holding office even before her first meeting because she is a teacher working at a council-run primary school, a devastating blow that left her “shocked and absolutely gutted” and opened up the almost certain prospect of an early by-election.
Her job breaches election rules that say no city council employee can also be a councillor, something that, incredibly, the Labour Party overlooked when it named her as its nominee for one of the ward’s two seats, alongside group leader Tom Renhard.
So Labour members did not take kindly at all when Clark opened her speech to formally propose fellow Brislington West ward Lib Dem, Andrew Varney, as lord mayor for the next 12 months by asking whether he was sure he was not disqualified from the role.
Hartcliffe & Withywood councillor Goggin, who was chairing his final full council meeting before handing over the chains to his successor, pleaded: “Jos, can we leave the politics out, mate?”
An unrepentant Clark replied: “Not today, I’m afraid. And let’s be honest, Liz Truss’ lettuce lasted longer.”
And with that, the gloves were off and you got the feeling nothing had really changed.
Labour councillor Fabian Breckels tried pointing out the comments would hurt Vittori but Clark would not relinquish the bone and simply retorted that Labour’s mistake would waste tens of thousands of pounds on a by-election and that, in any case, she wasn’t naming anyone.
The patience of Goggin – who just a few days earlier got married in the historic Lord Mayor’s Chapel on College Green – was already thin; he now snapped and he lost his rag, yelling at her while red in the face: “Councillor Clark, be quiet! Councillor Clark, be quiet!”
Goggin added that this was “Andrew’s day, not yours, and you should be talking about him”, a sentiment that received a smattering of applause.
Andrew Varney officially becomes Bristol’s new lord mayor – photo: Rob Browne
Decorum was restored and the mood became jovial again, with warm words from all sides of the chamber to incoming and outgoing lord mayor and deputy lord mayor.
There were some encouragingly accomplished maiden speeches by new members including Labour’s Zoe Peat and Thomas Blenkinsop, both newly elected councillors for Avonmouth & Lawrence Weston alongside former cabinet member for transport, Don Alexander, who will be chairing a development control committee under the new committee system.
There were also some heartfelt tributes to two former longtime councillors who died recently, Peter Abraham and Brian Richards.
The uplift in atmosphere even withstood what were supposed to be the only real political moments, albeit all agreed in advance: the establishment of the committees that replace the mayoral model, which residents voted to scrap in a referendum in 2022; and the appointment of the council’s first ever Green leader, Tony Dyer, and deputy, Heather Mack, following the party’s historic local elections victory.
Tony Dyer is Bristol’s first ever Green council leader – photo: Rob Browne
In his acceptance speech as leader, Dyer even managed to quote Spider-Man to impart some wisdom to the 70 councillors who collectively now have more decision-making authority than before the mayoral model was introduced in 2012: “With great power comes great responsibility.”
The damage was done 75 minutes earlier, however, and if anyone truly thought a change to a committee system, where cross-party groups of councillors make most of the decisions, would see the dawn of true collaboration and the end of political gamesmanship and squabbling, they would have had a rude awakening.
The restructure had been ushered in with grand proclamations and pinky promises that everyone would work together, but the post-election fallout over the last few weeks saw Labour firing the first shots of the new epoch, accusing the Greens and Lib Dems of forming a “coalition” in a “backroom deal”.
Greens hit back, insisting there was no coalition and claimed Labour had failed to turn up at meetings to agree on power-sharing.
Labour, now the second biggest party, was entitled to take two of the roles of chair of the eight new policy committees; a position roughly equivalent to the previous cabinet members with the authority to set the agenda and sign off spending decisions up to £500,000.
It declined, instead essentially positioning itself as the opposition and scrutineers rather than part and parcel of a pan-council administration and continuing to call the new administration a coalition.
And then Clark, the very first speaker at the very first council meeting, threw a grenade into what was left of the niceties.
Afterwards, several councillors from different parties independently expressed their dismay at her comments, all asking why she hadn’t “read the room”.
Well, because in the words of Dyer in his speech, “although seen by many as a successful city, Bristol remains a city with deep divisions” and this begins in the council chamber at City Hall.
The council chamber was almost at capacity at Tuesday’s AGM – photo: Rob Browne
Main photo: Rob Browne
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