Meet the Bristol mayor candidate: Alastair Watson

The conversation has ricocheted from Love Saves the Day to Margaret Thatcher within the first five minutes of the interview with Alastair Watson.

The former isn’t really his scene, although he’s glad to see it going ahead, and he admits he wasn’t a big fan of the late former prime minister – something to be kept quiet about among certain members of the Conservative Party.

Earlier this year, Watson was announced as the new Tory challenger for the role of Bristol mayor after Samuel Williams opted to stand for the regional mayoral position instead. Like his Lib Dem counterpart, Caroline Gooch, the Conservative candidate is standing on a platform of scrapping the role entirely.

A former lord mayor and councillor for Westbury-on-Trym, the businessman also stood unsuccessfully as the Conservative candidate for Cardiff North in the 2001 General Election.

So, why the foray back into politics now?

“One of the drivers that pushed me to take this role on is I really felt that we are going in the wrong direction, that the mayor system does not work for us,” says Watson.

“I’m scared for my city if we carry on the route we are going.

“I think if we keep on with Goram Homes and the City Leap, we will be in trouble financially. I would like to go back to a council that knows its role rather than trying to do the whole thing itself.”

He argues the establishment of the One City Office under Labour mayor Marvin Rees’ is an “anti-democratic” move because of the involvement of unelected representatives and says he was vehemently against setting up Bristol Energy, which went on to lose millions of public money.

Alastair Watson describes himself as a “pragmatic environmentalist” – photo courtesy of the Conservative Party

Talking via Zoom from the office of his Redland home, Watson has stacks of books and various memorabilia behind him.

Born and brought up in Ormskirk in Lancashire, the Tory candidate went to school at Merchant Taylors’ in Crosby near Liverpool and read material science at Oxford University. He went on to complete an MBA at Cranfield School of management before a career as a project manager and business consultant.

In the 1980s, he and his wife went to live in New Zealand, where they stayed for seven years – which brings us back to Thatcher. “I missed out on Thatcher’s time in office,” says Watson, who joined the party when he returned to England, by which time it was under the leadership of John Major.

Admitting he wasn’t a fan of Britain’s first female prime minister, the Tory candidate clarifies: “Some of the early things she did, we needed to get the country sorted – we were heading to nowhere, I was made redundant, job prospects in the 80s were awful. She did the right thing to get the economy back on its feet, but I think people are in office for too long really.”

He adds: “I have got to be careful what I say because she is revered by some members of the party.”

Getting back to the present day, Watson says the timing of the upcoming elections on May 6 worked out well. He had just finished a two-year contract and was thinking of dipping back into politics, although the plan initially was to do a bit of leafletting and door-knocking rather than run for the city’s top job.

Should he seize victory at the polls, the businessman intends to have a referendum on the mayoral system within the three-year term.

“I would campaign during that time to say let’s get rid of the Bristol mayor,” he says. “I would also want to review some of the bigger projects, particularly City Leap, which frightens me quite a bit.

“A lot of it is done in private because it has to be, but I question whether the council should be involved in something where we cannot be accountable.”

Watson, like most of his Tory colleagues, campaigned for Bristol to have a directly elected mayor. But he says two things have since changed; the voting system to an ‘all out’ vote, which means councillors are not constantly on the campaign trail, and the establishment of the West of England mayor role.

“I think having a Bristol mayor and a West of England Combined Authority (WECA) mayor is making things more difficult,” says Watson.

“No political system is perfect but I think the worst of all worlds is a mayor who is completely unaccountable to his own group of councillors and party. There is too much absolute power there.”

As for other issues, policing is a key one, with Watson promising to “bring back order for the law-abiding citizens of Bristol”.

Transport is another. Here, the Tory candidate promises to deliver more rail links, better bus services and improved infrastructure.

On the clean air zone, due to come into play in October, he says: “We have got to get our ducks in a row on this because we have got to keep a vibrant city centre and if we can’t get people in and out of that centre, we are going to lose our city centre. So we do have to look at transport very closely and work with the regional mayor on this.”

Alastair Watson and his son, John, used to co-own No Man’s Grace on Chandos Road – photo: Alastair Watson

Getting businesses up and running and the city “back to where it was” are other key priorities. Watson used to co-own the former No Man’s Grace restaurant on Chandos Road with his son, John, and says he loved the restaurant business but that it was tough to make money in.

Watson also says he is very environmentally-minded but remains sceptical of the chances of the city reaching its ambitious target of being carbon neutral by 2030.

“We don’t have unlimited amounts of money in Bristol,” he says. “We do have to provide day to day services; we have to provide elderly care and education and youth services and pick up the rubbish and so on. And when we look at how much we would need to achieve net-zero, we are probably talking in terms of billions and we don’t have that kind of money.

“I’m an environmentalist but I’m a pragmatic environmentalist.”

He argues that government intervention and cash is needed to make the change needed, adding: “When it comes to behavioural change, that has got to be through a legislative process.

“When I hear that Boris is giving more money to regional airports so we can all fly around the UK, I thought that doesn’t sound like quite the behavioural change we are looking for.”

Despite a willingness to criticise those within his own party, the Tory candidate, who voted to remain in the EU referendum after canvassing opinions from his two sons, insists he is a very enthusiastic member of the Conservative Party.

What, even over the last year and the handling of the pandemic?

“I think a lot of criticism of the handling of the pandemic is unfair,” he says. “You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. I think the general public feels the government has generally stepped up to the plate and done as much as it can. Maybe we were a bit over-optimistic at the beginning compared with a few other countries.

“I think the vaccination programme has gone superbly well, that has been a real feather in our cap. Some of the waste – or what’s perceived to be a waste of money – on contracts, at a time of national crisis, sometimes you do just have to take the decision to have a go and some of that money may have been wasted when you look at the end result but you didn’t know that at the time.

“I think the government did a good job, I think there will be lessons to learn and they will be learnt. I’m sure future pandemics will be better handled.”

Main photo by Aphra Evans

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