Inside the West of England mayor campaign, from Tory and Green threats to Dan Norris and low voter awareness

With the local elections campaign well underway, attention is turning to a string of key combined authority mayoral contests across England. I went to visit Bristol in the West of England region, one of two posts being defended by Labour, to get a sense of the mood on the doorstep and among activists.

Helen Godwin is fighting to defend the mayoralty for Labour, as current mayor and MP Dan Norris leaves his post following Labour rule changes about politicians holding dual roles.

However, the backdrop of the election has been tainted by Norris’ arrest on suspicion of rape, child sexual offences and child abduction – news which broke after my visit to the region.

In a post on social media following the news of his arrest, Godwin said: “I am shocked and upset by the serious allegations regarding Dan Norris. I’m pleased that the Labour Party took the swift action to immediately suspend him from the party.”

‘Choice is clear: Labour or the Conservatives’

With Bristol the largest city in the combined authority, it would be easy to assume that the upcoming election would be one between Labour and the Greens, following the strong performance of the Green Party in Bristol at the general election.

However, having spoken to activists on the ground, it’s clear that Labour sees the contest as one between them and the Conservatives, highlighting the areas outside of Bristol, such as Gloucestershire and Somerset, that were traditionally strongholds for the Conservatives up until last July.

As I spent the morning leafleting in the Central ward of the city, I noticed how the party’s campaign literature underlines that message to voters; one leaflet reads: “The choice is clear – Labour’s Helen Godwin focused on your priorities or a Conservative Party that doesn’t share your values”.

Yet none of the leaflets I saw during my time in Bristol mentioned the Greens even once. As an example, a bar chart of the last two mayoral election results highlighted Labour and the Conservatives, while leaving the bars of other parties greyed out.

Although the Greens came either first or second in every Bristol constituency, the party did not manage to get more than 6,000 votes in any of the other seats that make up the region at the general election.

Activists told me that the Greens had yet to actively campaign for the mayoral elections and, coupled with a change to their selected candidate in January, some think that their chances of victory are slim.

READ MORE: Revealed: Labour threatens MPs with sanctions for not campaigning enough

Labour group leader ‘hopeful’ of victory

Some will read the ‘two-horse race’ message as signalling there are at least some Labour fears about rival parties splitting the progressive vote in particular areas, even if the Greens aren’t seen as a serious rival for the mayoralty itself.

In the centre of town, I met with the Labour group leader Tom Renhard, who said he was “hopeful” Labour would win again. But he said that it will depend on ensuring enough people turnout to back the party instead of other “progressive” parties, that could risk the Tories winning as a result. Such a situation is more of a threat following the change in the voting system since the last election.

“The main threat here is the Tories potentially winning it, and I think there is a risk that if people vote Green and Lib Dem and don’t come over to Labour to defeat the Tories that’s what will happen. We had a Tory mayor for four years and, although Labour were ahead in the first round when we won it, it was a lot of second preferences that really increased that majority.

“It’s the only election in the region, so because of that low turnout, there’s a risk that a committed Tory vote turns out and we may lose out. I think it will be incredibly tight.

“I’m hopeful, but people need to come out and vote Labour or there’s a risk we don’t.”

‘There’s already unhappiness about the Greens’

Renhard said that, despite the government struggling in the opinion polls, there is still strong support for Labour and for Helen Godwin on the doorstep, with conversations with locals dominated by local issues. In particular, he highlights controversy with the Green-led administration in Bristol over plans to reduce black bin collections, a move that prompted thousands of residents to sign a Labour petition opposing four-weekly collections.

“There’s already quite a bit of unhappiness about how the Greens are running the council and how they have been handling things. They made lots of promises to lots of people to win the election, and we’re starting to see some community groups and residents getting a bit upset.”

That said, however, Renhard acknowledges that people are “impatient” to see the change Labour promised at the general election.

“I am impatient for change, I think we all want to get stuff done, but I think making everything work for you when you’ve been out of office for 14 years – it’s going to take time.

“What I think that impatience for change reflects is just how dire things got under the Tories. I think people want to see a positive vision for hope and we don’t want to promise and not deliver, because trust is already low from voters.”

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‘Labour was always my party’

In the afternoon, I travelled to Henleaze, a suburb in the north of Bristol, to a local pub to meet up with Helen Godwin, Labour’s candidate for the election, ahead of a canvassing session.

Godwin, who has spent much of her life in Bristol, outside of her time at university in Liverpool and a stint living in London, first began campaigning for the party during the 2010 election while working for Sadiq Khan.

“I really rated Gordon Brown, I was a huge fan of his.”

She described Labour as the natural party for her and said: “I think the Labour Party was always my party. I just believed in things being more fairer and more equal on an emotional level, probably more than from an economic point of view.

“I could just see when things don’t feel right for people.”

After the 2010 election, she said she “got the bug” for campaigning and soon became vice chair of her local CLP, and was later elected as a councillor in Bristol in 2016.

However, after taking a step back from politics in 2021 to work as a consultant focused on education, children’s services and special educational needs, she did not necessarily expect to be running for election once again.

“We just had a general election, I wasn’t going for any seats, didn’t try and get selected, so it wasn’t really on my radar. But I think if there was one job, it would be this job, because it’s home and it’s all about the future – what does our transport infrastructure start to look like, where’s our good growth going to come from, where are we going to build more houses, how we are doing to get the skills for the future.

“That’s what sort of gets me going – imagining what we could be. I think I’ve got a really strong understanding of the region. For me to be selected to do that leadership role is an honour, a privilege and also really exciting.”

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‘Being an MP and being mayor has not been the best combo’

Reflecting on the last four years of having a Labour mayor, she said that three-quarters of that time was spent under a Conservtive government uninterested in the region.

Speaking before news emerged of Norris’ arrest, she offered praise for his efforts to get more people on local bus services and work on addressing the climate emergency locally, but notably questioned Norris’ decision to continue as both MP and mayor for several months after the general election.

“The sea change in the government’s interest in devolution since July is really stark and obvious for everyone to see. I think being an MP and being mayor has not been the best combo in terms of making the most of that.”

All of the Labour leaflets I saw while in the region spoke of a “new chapter” for the West of England – Godwin explained: “I think the conditions are really different; having this government have a massive focus on economic growth and a massive focus on devolution, it feels like it’s the right time now for us to come and do something different and have a slightly different approach to it.”

READ MORE: Runcorn and Helsby by-election: Labour’s Karen Shore on Reform, the NHS, and closing asylum hotels

‘We’ve got to make it easy for people to get around’

What might that different approach entail? Godwin also said she would want to see greater powers for the region, following in the footsteps of the “trailblazing stuff” by Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester, as well as work by Tracy Brabin, Claire Ward and others.

“I would like that but I also want to make sure we are doing the best that we can actually do with the powers that we’ve got.

“What people are really talking about is reliability and consistency with our buses. It’s about the fact we are I think the biggest city in Europe without any mass transit system. People want to get around first and foremost, and then we’ve also got this hideous housing crisis.

“We’ve got to make it easy for people to get around, we’ve got to make it possible for people to live here and live well here.”

‘The Tory threat is very real’

On the doorstep, Godwin said voters are “pragmatic”, understanding that the government has been left a “big mess to clear up” and willing to “give them some time” to fix the issues the country faces.

“People are generally smiles on the doorstep.”

However, like Renhard and her campaign literature, she also stressed the risk of the Conservative candidate winning as a result of people opting for the Greens or the Liberal Democrats in parts of the region.

“There will be people who couldn’t think of anything worse than voting Green, who will be geographically a mile and a half from here, but will still feel like a world away. They’re much more likely to vote Conservative.

“There’s huge swathes of south Gloucestershire, and obviously you’ve got farther north east Somerset, so that Tory threat is very real.

“We’re talking to Green and Lib Dem voters and saying if you want that progressive leadership, give us your vote.”

The political patchwork – and low awareness of the contest

As our interview came to a close, I joined Godwin and roughly half a dozen others on a canvassing session around the ward. As I soon discovered, Henleaze, part of the Bristol North West constituency, is quite the political patchwork, having previously backed Conservatives, but currently represented by Liberal Democrat councillors and a Labour MP in Darren Jones.

One voter encapsulated this more than anyone else; an older gentleman admitted he was normally a Tory voter, but had backed the Lib Dems at the local elections last year, before voting for Jones a few months later.

I was pleasantly surprised to see Labour’s vote holding up, with quite a number of people saying they would back Labour at the election, but many more had not known an election was happening on May 1. During the one hour, our group had made 40 contacts, with the organiser telling me that the party had spoken to 600 voters last month.

Perhaps even more surprisingly, with the session taking place shortly after Liz Kendall’s announcement on welfare reform, there was little to no mention of the government and decisions taken by Labour since taking office – at least from those on the doorstep.

The biggest challenge, however, appears to be making voters aware not only of the election itself, but what the role of West of England mayor actually is and does. 

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