‘Bristol’s mayoral system has fallen victim to the bloody-mindedness of Bristolians’

So Bristol is going to hold a referendum in 2022 which could scrap the office of our elected mayor.

How did that happen? How did our city seemingly fall out of love with a system of local governance which – just nine years ago – was heralded as the dawn of a new political age?

As one of the people who played a small part in bringing the mayoral system here, I feel duty-bound to try to unravel that question.

The short answer is that I believe that Bristol’s mayoral system is indeed living on borrowed time. But not necessarily because of the forthcoming referendum.

Its days are numbered because the office is being undermined by a deadly cocktail of failed political promises, the vested interests of opposition councillors and a regional system of governance which is nothing short of a mess.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Because there’s much more to it than that.

Marvin Rees originally had a rainbow cabinet but soon scraped it, saying that opposition parties’ behaviour had made the arrangement “untenable” – photo: Bristol24/7

Why does Bristol even have a mayor?

Firstly, we can’t understand the present without understanding the journey from the past which has brought us to it. So let’s begin by reminding ourselves why the city voted to replace its existing party-based cabinet system with a one-person-leader mayoral system in a landmark referendum in 2012.

Bristol in 2012 was on the verge of political meltdown. The cabinet system was breaking because council elections rarely produced outright winners with a working majority. So the city was often governed by minority administrations – either Lib Dem or Labour.

Without a working majority, the parties in charge often found it impossible to get things done and they would literally cede power when governing became too difficult. I can remember at least one instance of a ruling party coming to the council chamber and saying that it didn’t want to rule any more. That’s no way to run a city.

Consequently, Bristol suffered a decade of council leaders whose power was neutered by political instability and whose political plans were often hampered by the need for cross-party agreement.

Mired in this stagnation, Bristol developed a reputation as the place where nothing got done. The city where developments went to die.

Meanwhile, Bristolians looked enviously at places like Manchester, Cardiff or Nottingham – which, with consistent leadership, had been able to make bold political decisions in areas like transport and city development.

These cities had trams, arenas and new sports stadia. Bristol consistently failed to get plans for any of these amenities off the ground – and its fragile political structure seemed to be to blame.

At the mercy of this political dithering, Bristolians became jaded by the city’s system of local governance. Probably more so than any other city dwellers in the UK.

The Downing Street meeting

So when the prime minister of the time, David Cameron, suggested an alternative, the city took notice.

I know, because I was there when Cameron suggested it.

As the editor of the Bristol Post, I was part of a surreal melange of Bristol’s so-called Great And Good who, in early 2012, shuffled self-consciously into a stateroom in Number 10 Downing Street to be sweet-talked by Cameron and Boris Johnson (then the mayor of London) on the advantages of an elected mayor.

The Bristol group was what can only be described as an eclectic bunch – including then Tory leader Peter Abraham (one of the most vocal proponents of the mayoral system), then Labour leader Helen Holland (who sidled up to me at one point and said: “I’m not here”), Lakota owner Marti Burgess (who, at the time, was running a campaign for an elected mayor) and George Ferguson, then the founder of the Tobacco Factory but who, of course, went on to become ‘George The First’ – the unlikely winner as an independent candidate of the first mayoral election.

Notable by her absence was the then Lib Dem council leader Barbara Janke – although her party was represented by the Bristol West Lib Dem MP Stephen Williams.

To say that Cameron and Johnson (who insisted on calling the prime minister ‘Dave’) talked up the mayoral system would be an understatement. And although it may seem like a strange footnote in the city’s political story, I believe this meeting swayed many of the people in the room.

The prime minister made a powerful argument for an elected mayor. Most significantly, he promised to create a super-cabinet of big-city mayors which would meet every month with him in the chair.

This was what many in Bristol wanted to hear. The city had long felt overlooked when it came to funding and influence in Westminster. Here was a chance for Bristol to get its feet under a table of real power.

In fairness to him, one person who wasn’t convinced was Wessex Water chairman Colin Skellett, then the leader of the Local Enterprise Partnership, who I remember predicting that the mayoral referendum would be a distraction for the city.

It is interesting to note that today’s business representative, James Durie, is using exactly the same words about next year’s referendum.

But many of us returned to Bristol with the opposite opinion. After more informal conversations with civil servants and ministers, I decided that the Post would campaign for a yes vote in the referendum due to take place in May of 2012 and we did so by supporting Marti Burgess’ Yes Campaign.

Come the day of the referendum, Bristol was one of 11 UK cities holding a similar vote. Only Bristol voted yes.

At the time, it was seen as classic Bristol – turning left when all the other cities turned right.But that is where the problems began.

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Read more:

• ‘Bristol’s mayoral model has failed to deliver on its promises’
• ‘Getting rid of the mayor would relegate Bristol to the status of a parish council’

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Problem one: the mayoral structure

In fact, Bristol going it alone was the first death knell for our new system of government. The refusal by cities like Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Nottingham to vote yes meant there could be no Westminster parliament of city mayors. David Cameron could not deliver on his boldest promise.

But wait. ‘Don’t Birmingham and Manchester have elected mayors?’ I hear you say. ‘Aren’t they Andy Burnham and Andy Street?’

No, they’re not. And this is the next issue which besets Bristol’s elected mayoral system.

To compare Marvin Rees’ role to that of Andy Burnham or Andy Street is a misnomer. Their roles are very different.

Burnham and Street are metro mayors. Their domains, like the mayor of London, cover more than one local authority. In Manchester’s case, Andy Burnham oversees ten local authorities which include Bolton, Oldham, Bury and Wigan.

Andy Street is the metro mayor of the West Midlands region, which includes Birmingham, Solihull, Walsall and Wolverhampton.

This extra layer of governance has been inserted above cities (without a referendum) since Bristol’s referendum in 2012.

In fact, the Bristol region does have a metro mayor, although the painful truth is that many Bristolians have never heard of him. He’s Dan Norris, and he’s the Labour metro mayor of the area which used to be the hated county of Avon – Bristol, Bath & North East Somerset (BANES), South Gloucestershire and North Somerset.

But because this is Bristol, there’s one added complication. After agreeing to it in principle, North Somerset then refused to sign up to the new combined authority of WECA (the West of England Combined Authority). So only three of the region’s four authorities are properly in it.

The West of England Combined Authority covers Bristol, South Glos and B&NES but not North Somerset – map: WECA

Despite this, WECA is responsible for big regional issues like planning and transport and is the main funding conduit for them. Take Rees’ much-vaunted underground proposal. He is undoubtedly the public face of this ambitious plan. But any government funding for it will come through WECA.

So we have two mayors. One with a high profile – Bristol’s elected mayor Marvin Rees. And one with little profile but the real funding power – WECA’s elected mayor Dan Norris.

Before Norris came to office, when the WECA mayor was the affable but ineffectual Tory Tim Bowles, the system was sort of stable. But Norris’ arrival has seen a new political vigour injected into the WECA governance and that has put him on an inevitable collision course with the political structure around him.

This flawed structure puts one elected mayor at a table chaired by another elected mayor. The harsh political reality is that this evolved mayor-on-mayor mishmash makes for an uncomfortable and confusing political mess which no civil servant would have created from scratch.

Put simply, the fact that WECA has an arguably more powerful elected mayor weakens the case for a mayoral office in Bristol.

West of England metro mayor Dan Norris is not shy of a photo opportunity; here he is sampling the first jar of honey to be produced by Yew Tree Farm in Bedminster Down – photo: WECA

Problem two: opposition councillors

Meanwhile, there is little cross-party support back home in City Hall, where the mayoral role is being further undermined by councillors who feel disenfranchised and see their own power and influence being diminished by it.

In the political numbers game, the elected mayor’s office has become one which the Labour Party should win at every election. George Ferguson’s victory as an independent in 2012 was a one-off – particularly as full council elections now accompany the mayoral vote (which they didn’t when Ferguson won).

That is really what the recent successful bid to reinstate a referendum was all about. It is no surprise that the motion was proposed by the Lib Dems, the last party to be in power before we had an elected mayor.

Of course, the situation has been like this since the mayor was first elected in 2012. But these political sharks can smell blood in the water and they’re circling for the kill.

Problem three: Bristolians

There’s one final problem: the public. Bristol’s mayoral system has fallen victim to the bloody-mindedness of Bristolians.

Back in 2012, Bristol voted for an elected mayor because it was sick of the political indecision which was perceived as holding back the city.

In fairness to them, the city’s two elected mayors have not been remiss in enacting some of the bold decision-making which Bristolians were demanding. I give you Ferguson’s Residents’ Parking Zones or Rees’ controversial move of the planned arena from the city centre to Filton.

But here’s the irony: this strong leadership and bold decision-making, the very characteristics demanded by those who voted for the mayoral system, have proved to be key in making the office unpopular.

And I believe that this perfect storm of unpopular decision-making and opposition-party opportunism, underpinned by the vagaries of a shifting political landscape, will eventually make the office of elected mayor unsustainable in Bristol.

Is the problem our mayors?

Some might argue that none of the above would matter if the elected mayors had acted differently.

Is the problem the mayors themselves and the decisions they’ve made? Perhaps a different mayor could have conducted him or herself in a way which was more acceptable to both the voters and the city councillors?

But the fact that two leaders from different backgrounds with different approaches and different political persuasions have both succeeded in becoming unpopular probably proves otherwise.

The bottom line is that the city mayor’s role is not the one promised by the government in 2012 which many people – including me – campaigned for. And while opposition councillors might believe that the Bristol mayor is too powerful, the office’s wider power has in reality been diminished by the creation of a metro mayor.

So what next?

Where does this leave our city? What would happen if the mayoral office was indeed scrapped?

There is a real danger that Bristol could return to the minority administrations and political frailty which previously plagued its municipal decision-making.

Perhaps the uncomfortable truth is that neither system of governance works properly for our city. Perhaps what we really need is a root-and-branch overhaul of our entire region’s governing structure.

But therein lies a whole new debate and our local turkeys are unlikely to vote for that Christmas.

In the meantime, Bristolians should be very careful what they wish for.

Mike Norton is the former editor of the Bristol Post and founder of Mike Norton Communications

Mike Norton – photo: Ellie Pipe

Main photo: Mayor of London / Twitter

Read more: Business bigwigs urge councillors to vote to retain elected mayor

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