For the West England Combined Authority (WECA) area, there’s an election coming in the next few months and we will have a new metro mayor, no matter who wins, on 2 May 2025. However, it’s going to be much tougher to predict this election than perhaps any other election in the UK when we go to the polls. This is due to various factors that I’ll be looking at in this article.
What is WECA?
One of the biggest issues facing anyone standing for the role of mayor is that no one really knows what the WECA is, unless, like me, you’re a complete nerd about UK politics.
The WECA consists of the former controversial Avon County minus the Council of North Somerset, though they still collaborate on such matters as transport.
Who is the current mayor?
In 2021 Dan Norris was elected as mayor, becoming the second West England mayor in as many elections.
Since then, he has clashed with the former Bristol Mayor, Marvin Rees, about an underground metro system for the city, giving the most succinct answer I’ve ever seen in an interview. He has also expanded the bus system in the area, introduced a Birthday Month Free Bus travel scheme, and opened the first new train station in Bristol in almost 100 years (the Parson Street Station originally opened in 1927).
Not that Dan Norris’s tenure has been all sunshine and rainbows. He has often clashed with the local authorities, particularly over how much power the mayor has over the councils within their remit. And there have been some strange cases, particularly concerning public transport policy.
Public transport
He has spent significant funds commissioning a report on improved public transport, only to conclude that it would be a good idea to reintroduce trams. This idea is strange because urban development and the over-reliance of cars in the modern day means that there isn’t much room to fit trams into Bristol to the extent that Bristolians would need.
Some vital bus routes that many rural areas relied on have been closed during Norris’s time, despite his having pledged to improve transport in the area.
In the 2024 general election, Mr Norris stood as the Labour candidate for Northeast Somerset and Hanham, going up against the ‘Jacob Marley’ candidate, Jacob Rees-Mogg, an election he won.
Norris said he could maintain both jobs, citing his time previously as, simultaneously, both the Mayor of the Tees Valley and a member of the House of Lords. But success in this dual role has not seemed to be the case. According to Kevin Guy, Lib Dem leader of the Bath and North East Somerset council, there was “turmoil at the top of WECA”.
The 2025 mayoral election
Due to the tightening of the rules on second jobs, Dan Norris stood down as the Labour candidate in September, giving his Labour successor plenty of time to establish themselves once they had been elected (if only Biden had taken note).
This is not the only thing that’s different. Thanks to a piece of electoral law that the Conservatives passed in 2022, local and mayoral elections now have to use First Past The Post instead of the Supplementary Vote system.
While Sadiq Khan and Andy Burnham still saw electoral success, for regions like West England the right leaning candidate could have the advantage as the left vote is split three ways and the right leaning vote has only one candidate.
So far, only four parties have announced a candidate.
Succeeding Mr Norris as Labour candidate is Helen Godwin. She was a cabinet member for the former Bristol mayor, Marvin Rees. Her main policies concern transport for the area, creating more jobs, and sorting out the housing crisis.
The Greens initially nominated Heather Mack who then stepped down from the nomination to focus on her responsibilities as Deputy Leader of the Bristol City Council. She was replaced by Mary Page who was the Green candidate for Bristol North West (a seat she lost to Labour’s Darren Jones). Page said in her announcement on 3 February 2025 that she’ll focus on “housing that builds rather than breaks communities, the opportunity to train and upskill for permanent, quality jobs and sustainable transport for our cities and our rural areas”.
On the 21 January 2025, the Lib Dems nominated Bath and North East Somerset councillor for Walcot, Oli Henman, as their candidate. In his nomination statement, Mr Henman said, “I’m committed to cutting waste and red tape in the mayor’s office and putting power back where it belongs, in the hands of local communities. The West of England mayor has a key role to play in delivering affordable and accessible transport, sustainable housing, and the jobs of the future”.
The Tories have nominated former councillor for Westbury-on-Trym & Henleaze, Sam Smith, who, in his nomination announcement, said, “Our region has huge potential to lead in areas such as innovation, green technology and sustainable growth, but we need strong leadership to unlock that potential for everyone in our community.”
At the time of writing, only Reform UK hasn’t announced a candidate for the upcoming mayoral election, but they could be focusing on getting a significant number of candidates in the local elections as many of the Conservative seats up for grabs got elected under a political bounce after the vaccine programme was rolled out.
Why is this mayoral election hard to predict?
The WECA has been one of the Metro areas that few people know about.
Bristol, Bath & NE Somerset and South Gloucestershire have no shared history beyond the former County Avon that was created the last time Westminster tried to redraw the county administrative boundaries in 1974. These boundary changes were so unpopular, they were abolished in 1996.
North Somerset was also part of County Avon but declined to be included in the WECA area when it was formed.
In the WECA, each city and area has its own culture and sense of identity. Other areas with their own metro mayor, such as Greater London or Greater Manchester, may also have their own sense of local identity (particularly in Greater Manchester’s case). But they still look to the biggest city for their work and entertainment.
A tale of three counties
WECA not only has two cities (Bristol and Bath) in its domain, but each city is so very different. It can feel like you’re travelling in time when you move between them. Bristol is part of the 11 core cities of the UK and feels incredibly modern and diverse. Bath, on the other hand, gets most of its income from tourism with people visiting to admire the Roman Baths and the city’s architecture.
There’s also the matter of the two cities having very different politics. Bristol is a left leaning city which, in the past, has shifted from the Lib Dems to Labour and, most recently, to the Greens. By contrast, Bath and North East Somerset have traded between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats over that past 20 years. Although the Tories ruled as the biggest party in South Gloucestershire between 2003 and 2023, the region has often been run by coalitions with no overall control on its council.
Each county has its own needs and wants that are very different from each other. Part of the reason why transport issues were the biggest headlines that came out of the Norris tenure was because transport is the one thing all three areas can agree on: transport links between the areas need to be improved.
Recent Shifts in voting patterns
Additionally, the areas in question have gone through some surprising elections results lately, such as the Green Party becoming the largest party in Bristol, larger even than Labour and the Lib Dems, leading a coalition with Labour in South Gloucestershire. These unusual results only add to uncertainty about predicting the next mayoral election.
So, as we can see, there are many major factors behind why this mayoral election is so hard to predict.
Aside from these uncertainties, whoever gets elected is going to have considerable problems from the very beginning in trying to find a middle ground between three very different areas with different needs and priorities.
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