In between taking calls, Norris channels his inner Trump

To mangle a phrase, nothing in his leaving of scrutiny became Dan Norris. Absolutely nothing.

As councillors put him on the spot at the Weca scrutiny committee, the mayor of the West of England paraded his failure to grasp detail, slipped in the usual snide digs and took one of his trips into fantasyland.

I was there on Monday because I had been prevented from asking a question that would have embarrassed the monitoring officer and more so his boss, the chief executive. Gagged by order of Bob Brown. That is: Bob the monitoring officer, Bob the judge and Bob the jury. Oh, and Bob the accused.

At Norris’s last Q&A session with the scrutiny committee, there was no running water. No loos, bottled water at Weca’s headquarters. Late last year audit was called off because there was no electricity. That third world vibe – and not just in the shallow democracy that is played out.

Jerome Thomas, a Green councillor for Clifton, chairs the meeting and greets the mayor: “Thank you for exposing yourself on repeated occasions.” I am not making it up.      

First up was Ann Morgan from Bath and North East Somerset (Banes), who modestly admitted she never spoke. She wanted to know whether there might be railway lines planned to the south of Bristol, such as to Midsomer Norton. Norris could only offer Saltford, fortunately in the constituency of the £91,346-a-year MP for North East Somerset and Hanham.

“We’re also looking to the south of Bristol at Ashton Gate and St Anne’s and Lockleaze [which is in the north], I think it is. I can’t remember, is that the other one or … And then we’ve got the Henbury Loop which is talked about a lot in the north of Bristol.”

Enough. You can tell when someone has a mastery of their subject. And it isn’t now. Time for an excursion into dreamland by the £7,993.29-a-month part-time mayor. “I have this fantasy that the line that used to exist and run through near my home over the Pensford viaduct would still be there, but of course it’s been very developed and houses have been built on the track and one thing or another. What a shame that happened! What a shame that we couldn’t reopen that line!”

I don’t wish to break the spell. I don’t need to. Norris’s mobile phone does that.

“Can I just take this call, I’m so sorry …” Was it the prime minister, breaking off from the brink of World War Three to offer Norris a parliamentary undersecretary’s post in Defra? Was it the lawyers for the League Against Cruel Sports, about the millions of pounds being claimed by its former chief executive against the anti-foxhunting charity that Norris chairs?  

It’s an excruciating 90 seconds. “Can you put it in the box? … You need to keep going down to Compton Dando…” Suddenly I am thinking of the Lower Chew Forest, an eminently worthwhile woodland project to which Weca lent £2 million last year. Near Norris’s place. Must get down there.

And he’s back with a little bragging. “This is a very exciting time for our region in terms of transport… We’ve had two railway stations now of course built in the last couple of years and opened, which is absolutely fantastic,” says Norris. The fact that station money was greenlighted during his predecessor’s term in 2019 isn’t worth mentioning. “What I should obviously say as well is that we are very close to formalising our decision about the Bristol and Portishead line, which is obviously very important too,” he says, sowing a seed of doubt into the project that was “steaming ahead” a month ago.

Later Norris is asked by the chair whether the Portishead line will survive a comprehensive spending review. “You’re asking me … will things go ahead if there’s a nuclear bomb? We hope there isn’t a nuclear bomb, we hope there isn’t one that is stifled by any kind of thing that central government decides. All we can do is what we can do.”

It’s Dan the Donald. Days earlier in the Oval Office with President Zelenskyy, Trump had responded to a reporter: “What if anything? What if a bomb drops on your head right now?”

I am not sure channelling Trump is such a great idea. For example: “We now need to … build on the fantastic success that we have achieved because it has been an amazing achievement. I think we got an award or something the other day, didn’t we, for our region being the best at doing this, which is great, but we’re only as good as our last success. What matters is what we achieve in the future.”

I record those sentences only to show the depths of inanity available to man. Yes, the mayor thinks “we” got an award “or something”.

Sitting beside me is transport campaigner Dave Redgewell, who deserves an award for sticking with it. He seems to know much more than anyone else here, certainly more than the mayor. Later he switches between chiding and cheerleading when he makes his own breathless statement from the floor, a tour d’horizon of the region’s travel.

Perhaps it’s time for harder questions. Toby Wells, a Green from Bristol, gives Norris a free pass over the expiry of the Best Value Notice, the naughty stool that government put Weca on over the shambolic leadership inside and outside the authority.  

“I am very frustrated by that because other mayoral combined authorities have their issues, but they don’t do it in public,” the mayor complains, “and we see the trouble that that causes with Donald Trump don’t we? He’s arguing in public; that causes all sorts of bother.”

He adds: “Of course there are differences, that’s inevitable in politics. All you have to do is have those things behind closed doors.” I am not sure if he supports closed doors or not. Often enough I have heard him saying he refused to do deals behind closed doors. And in order to be behind closed doors, the mayor might have needed to be in the room.

Norris’s deliveryman is back on the line. Another insult to the attendees wrapped in a 25-second telephone call.

Wells’s real question is about the Keynsham bypass bus lanes reportedly cancelled by Labour mayoral candidate Helen Godwin on her Facebook page. Again, apologies for reproducing this exchange but you won’t get the full horror if I don’t.  

Norris: “About the Keynsham bypass, well, look, that was simply a decision that was made because we had a local by-election happening. So it wasn’t appropriate to have that consultation. And then now we’ve moved into the period where we’ve got the mayoral election. So it’s quite right that that be suspended for the moment. The new mayor…”

Wells: “Sorry, has the decision been taken?”

Norris: “What, in perpetuity? You mean forever?”

Wells: “Well I’m just confused what the decision actually is.” (He’s not the only one.)

Norris: “The decision is that the consultation has stopped and a new mayor will have to consider that, but because of the elections it would not be appropriate to consider that.”

Wells is beaten.

Mark Weston, Bristol’s Tory leader, wants to drill into the decision. Please, no. He doesn’t think the decision followed due process. Imagine! The back and forth becomes hard to relate at this stage before Norris defers to chief executive Stephen Peacock for the definitive view.

Peacock: “There has been no decision other than to pause a consultation. The project still has teams working on it and those teams are Bristol city council, Banes and Combined Authority officers all working together until and unless somebody tells us not to. We’re politically led, so we do as the [leaders’] committee wishes us to do.”

That’s political Peacock’s mantra. It’s unlikely that Weca’s officers will ever speak truth to power under him. (As they had to with the unlawful bus wrap – a topic for another day.) Will they ever voluntarily face scrutiny for their actions or public comments – as in the case of Peacock and Brown misleading the scrutiny committee – I would say: absolutely not.

Meanwhile, the bypass teams are hard at work on something that probably won’t happen. Carry on Weca.