Cabinet members team up to slam ex-mayor

George Ferguson has said that Bristol “deserved to lose Eurovision” after our city was not named among the UK cities shortlisted to host the contest in 2023.

But the ex-mayor has been roundly slammed by Labour cabinet members who have accused Ferguson’s attitude of being “really disappointing”.

Ferguson has previously made it clear that a “shovel-ready” arena project was ready at Arena Island before his successor Marvin Rees pulled the plug on those plans.

Over recent years, Bristol’s first elected mayor has loudly condemned Rees’ decision to locate the city’s long-awaited arena within the Brabazon hangars in Filton.

Rees announced Bristol’s bid to host Eurovision at the as yet unbuilt YTL Arena at the Pride festival on the Downs in July, but the city failed to reach the criteria needed to host the event.

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Read more: YTL have paid for flights, a hotel and meals for Rees in last seven months

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In response to Ferguson’s comments, cabinet member for transport, Don Alexander, tweeted: “This is really disappointing. Our old mayor seeming to express joy at the city’s loss to make a political point. We need everyone in Bristol rooting for Bristol’s success. It’s not ok for you to trample the city’s reputation in pursuit of your personal political agenda.”

Labour group leader Steve Pearce shared Alexander’s sentiments almost word for word, saying that “the posts in this thread are disappointing. Seeming to derive pleasure at the city’s loss to make a political point. We need everyone in Bristol rooting for its success, talking our city up. It’s not ok to use the city as a vehicle to work out your issues with the mayor.”

Ellie King, cabinet member with responsibility for communities, added: “Our Eurovision bid was strong and I am proud of the ambition that Marvin Rees showed in putting us forward, particularly with how we would have put Ukraine at the heart of it.”

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These are Ferguson’s comments in full:

I don’t know who came up with the idea of Bristol bidding to stage the Eurovision Song Contest but it was a futile time-wasting political stunt with a snowball’s chance in hell of success. Not only was it time wasting, presumably at our expense, but it raised false hopes with many, especially the city’s hundreds of Ukrainian guests, some of whom were gathered together at City Hall last week to be told that it was a serious possibility and that they should give the bid their time and support. I was left to explain to my Ukrainian friends they were being led up the garden path by a futile fantasy!

Bristol could have been a serious contender if our mayor had not chosen to cancel the Arena Island project at Temple Meads for which in 2016 we had a acquired a fixed construction price and great operators who would have opened the venue by the end of 2019.

Asking the European Broadcasting Union to believe that a suitable Eurovision venue could be delivered from scratch within a 75-year-old aircraft hangar with no public transport infrastructure in just a few months was stretching credibility to the limit. Even if by some miracle something could have been cobbled together, it would have had little or no chance of competing with the seven shortlisted cities who have had the foresight to provide great venues, mostly within far more sustainable urban locations.

Am I angry? Yes! I am deeply frustrated that party politics gets in the way of good things happening in Bristol, and continues to do so. The cancellation of the Bristol Arena, on a promise by the Filton developers that they would deliver one of their own, was a blatant stitch-up between the mayor and the Malaysian developers, who six years later have nothing but an empty hangar and bits of paper to show. Of course the right thing is to build an arena in the city, adjacent to the South West’s principal public transport hub at Temple Meads. It still would be possible if the Council had not hastily handed the site over to Legal & General, thereby losing the £50m or so worth of grant we had acquired.

As many will know, in 2012 I was a strong advocate of Bristol having an elected mayor, prior to the concept of the metro mayor coming to fruition in 2017. Now we only have 18 months or so of an elected city mayor remaining and I am sure that the arena fiasco has played a part in the mayoral referendum being called, resulting in the post coming to an end in May 2024. Let’s hope that a Committee and Council Leader system produces something more sensible and that we play to our communal strengths, of which we have many, rather than to some political fantasy.

The YTL Arena may eventually come to fruition but it will be primarily car dependent and will never benefit the city in the way Bristol’s own Arena Island venue would have done.

Main photo: Bristol24/7

Read more: Those leading Bristol’s Eurovision bid confident that city is ‘ideal host’

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