Your say / Politics
‘We have too many unaccountable mayors with too many egos’
In 2012, many of us voted to change the way Bristol was governed – opting to have an elected mayor. We hoped this would deliver more decisive leadership, accountability and greater national influence for our city.
We weren’t completely wrong in this.
However, the only way that central government could see that this could be achieved was to give the mayor all the power vested in the city council and remove any mechanism to veto their decisions or unseat them during their term of office.
is needed now More than ever
This was a fatal flaw that has started to come to light during the second term of this city governance model.
Dictatorships can work temporarily when the office holder is benign and listens to all opinions. They can be dangerous when a cabal of cronies takes over, refuses to open itself to scrutiny and won’t take any criticism of its decisions.
This latter scenario is the route we are going down in Bristol. Regardless of who the future mayor might be, we need to safeguard proper, democratic representation in the city.
Luckily, two things have changed since 2012. We now operate all-out elections on a four-yearly cycle, removing the ‘elections by thirds’ method that meant that, in the past, for three out of four years, councillors were effectively in campaign mode.
This means that there is now more consistency in the council chamber; and a leader of council would have the ability to be more decisive in the longer term.
The second change is that we now have a regional mayor of the West of England Combined Authority who has powers and funding to make a real difference in the areas of economic development, transport infrastructure, post-16 skills development and planning strategy.
This removes the need for strong decision-making powers for Bristol in these areas, although a collaborative approach will be necessary for this to work well for the city.
Indeed, we are now finding that an autocratic Bristol mayor can be a barrier to cooperation and progress.
So – let’s face it, we have too many mayors with too many egos, and no way of holding them to account.
If something isn’t working, it is right to say so early and not carry on until disaster strikes, or the city sinks under a mountain of debt.
It is time to have a new referendum to put in place better democratic checks and balances. I will campaign to scrap the role of mayor, even if it happens to be me!
Alastair Watson is the Conservative Party candidate for mayor of Bristol
Read more: Bristol City Council bans ads on junk foods, gambling and payday loans
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