79 seconds of harmony... then all hell broke loose
FOR 79 glorious seconds of the first big set-piece meeting of Bristol City Council’s brave new post-mayoral era, peace and harmony reigned.
Birds chirped outside City Hall, dappled sunshine broke through the windows and – you won’t believe this – some of the buses even arrived on time on College Green.
Then all hell broke loose and we got a taste of what is possibly to come in the new committee system. Seventy-nine seconds was all it took between outgoing lord mayor Cllr Paul Goggin 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, taking the sunshine with it. 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.
This year, one early barbed comment from Lib Dem group leader Cllr Jos Clark popped that bubble.
She 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.
Ms 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 a by-election already.
Her job breaches election rules that say no city council employee can also be a councillor, something that, incredibly, the Labour Party overlooked last October when it named her as its nominee for one of the ward’s two seats, alongside group leader Cllr Tom Renhard.
So its members did not take kindly at all when Cllr Clark opened her speech to formally propose fellow Brislington West ward Lib Dem Cllr Andrew Varney as lord mayor for the next 12 months by asking whether he was sure he was not disqualified from the role.
Cllr Goggin, who chaired the meeting before handing over the chains to his successor, pleaded: “Jos, can we leave the politics out, mate?”
An unrepentant Cllr Clark replied: “Not today, I’m afraid. And let’s be honest, Liz Truss’s lettuce lasted longer…”
And with that, the gloves were off and you got the feeling nothing had really changed.
Labour Cllr Fabian Breckels tried pointing out the comments would hurt Ms Vittori but Cllr Clark, herself a previous lord mayor, would not relinquish the bone and simply retorted that Labour’s mistake would waste tens of thousands of pounds on a byelection and that, in any case, she wasn’t naming anyone.
Cllr Goggin’s patience, already thin by now, snapped and he lost his rag, yelling at her: “Cllr Clark, be quiet! Cllr Clark, be quiet!” adding that this was “Andrew’s day, not yours, and you should be talking about him”, a sentiment that received a smattering of applause.
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, some encouragingly accomplished maiden speeches by new members and 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 Cllr Tony Dyer and deputy Cllr Heather Mack following the party’s historic local elections victory.
In his acceptance speech as leader, Cllr 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 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 at the full council meeting on Tuesday, May 21.
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 then Cllr 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 Cllr Clark’s comments, all of them asking why she hadn’t “read the room”.
Well, because in the words of Cllr Dyer in his speech: “Although seen by many as a successful city, Bristol remains a city with deep divisions.” Beginning with City Hall. Politicians will rarely agree, and it’s healthy that they don’t. A functioning opposition is essential to any regime or administration, and there’s nothing wrong with a tension that pits an idealism of consensus against a realism of disagreement and debate. That’s democracy.
At its core, that seems to be what the committee system will have to contend with and try to balance.
But at the end of the lord mayormaking ceremony, as councillors trudged off through the doors at the back of the chamber to enjoy coffee and cake in the adjacent Queen Elizabeth II Conference Hall, no one was under any illusion of the size of the task.
So based on first evidence, perhaps there’s a more appropriate – and pessimistic – Spider-Man quote: “If you expect disappointment then you’ll never get disappointed.”
❝ Let’s be honest, Liz Truss’s lettuce lasted longer…
Cllr Jos Clark