Mayor who united city’s journalists against him stands down — with one last parting shot

A mayor who regularly hit the headlines for his scuffles with the media marked polling day with an apparent barb at local journalists.

Bristol Mayor Marvin Rees’ role has been abolished by the city council following a referendum last year which asked residents to back the directly-elected mayor position, or revert back to a more traditional committee system of city governance. Residents backed the latter.

His formal term is expected to end on May 7, bringing to an end one of the most fraught relationships between local press and an elected local official in the UK.

And Mr Rees — whose office banned a local democracy reporter from the mayor’s briefings last year following stories questioning global air travel to talk about climate change — seemingly couldn’t resist one last dig at local journalists.

After BristolLive reported speculation Mr Rees had already left his post and cleared his office, the Mayor posted a picture of himself, reading the Bristol Post, inside the main council chamber.

Reviewing Mr Rees time in office, which began in 2016, local democracy reporter Alex Seabrook noted the mayor had run ins with the media on a regular basis.

In 2019, the former Bristol Post editor criticised his “petty and childish” ridicule of one reporter for calling a new recycling centre a “rubbish tip”. In 2022, journalists across the city boycotted the mayor’s fortnightly press conferences, after he faced questions about flying to Vancouver to deliver a 14-minute Ted Talk on the climate crisis.

His press officer at the time tried to defend the decision saying it wasn’t a ‘public meeting’ so they could choose who should attend.

Mr Rees’ head of communications Saskia Konyenburg took exception to a question posed by Bristol Local Democracy Reporter Alex Seabrook about Mr Rees’ decision to fly 4,900 miles to Vancouver to deliver a 14-minute TED talk on the subject of climate change.

A clip of the incident was viewed more than 250k times on social media, and prompted complaints from the BBC, ITV, BristolWorld, Bristol Cable, Bristol 24/7 and BristolLive, which employs Alex.

The NUJ and the News Media Association also weighed in with criticism.

The communications department at the city council was also strongly criticised for keeping the removal of the Edward Colston statue from a Bristol dock secret after it had been pushed into the water be protesters.

The council had tried to claim that allowing even the Press Association to document a historic city moment would risk alerting troublemakers, a claim which was later removed from social media.

Documents released to Whatdotheyknow showed the council did, however, arrange for an in-house film crew to record events, much to the anger of journalists.

But did any of this matter to the public?

In 2022, Bristol voted in a city-wide referendum to scrap the mayoral role altogether. This year, the council will switch to a committee model of governance, with councillors on eight policy committees sharing power, instead of concentrated in one directly elected mayor.

Mr Rees denied the referendum results were about him, as he was always planning to stand down this year. But many critics said his brash manner played a key factor, reported the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Mr Rees remains proud of the globetrotting trip to discuss climate change, saying a farewell speech: “From giving a Ted Talk at the global conference in Vancouver, to launching 3Ci, and speaking on behalf of the global Mayors Migration Council at several UN conferences on migration and refugees, we are shaping national and international agendas.”

Mr Rees, a former journalist, declined to comment to the Local Democracy Reporting Service, but has given a sit-down interview to ITV instead.