{"id":67734,"date":"2025-05-02T06:46:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-02T06:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/67734\/"},"modified":"2025-05-02T06:46:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-02T06:46:12","slug":"reforms-arron-banks-says-narrow-defeat-in-mayor-election-pretty-epic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/67734\/","title":{"rendered":"Reform’s Arron Banks says narrow defeat in Mayor election ‘pretty epic’"},"content":{"rendered":"

‘Bristol and Bath should not be natural Reform territory and we aced it’News<\/a><\/p>\n

John Wimperis<\/strong> Local Democracy Reporter<\/p>\n

07:01, 02 May 2025<\/p>\n

(Image: PAUL GILLIS \/ Reach PLC)<\/p>\n

Reform UK’s Arron Banks has hailed the right wing party’s performance in the West of England Mayor election as ‘pretty epic’.<\/p>\n

He was narrowly defeated by Labour’s Helen Godwin who won by just three percent of the vote. She received 51, 197 votes (25%), while Mr Banks received 45,252 votes (22.1%).<\/p>\n

But Mr Banks \u2014 a South Gloucestershire<\/a>-based insurance magnate known for being a major Brexit donor \u2014 said he did not think there was more Reform could have done to won.<\/p>\n

He said: “That was a pretty epic response to be honest. Bristol and Bath<\/a> should not be natural Reform territory and we aced it.<\/p>\n

“The Greens will be disappointed they didn’t win but it was a good result for us.”<\/p>\n

The Greens hoped to ride a wave of recent electoral success in Bristol, where last year the Green Party won the council and its co-leader Carla Denyer won Bristol Central in the general election.<\/p>\n

Although the Greens were only about 2,500 votes behind Labour<\/a> in Bristol itself, the party came third overall with 41,094 votes. Mr Banks called the Reform and the Greens ‘the rebel alliance’.<\/p>\n

He told supporters at the count: \u201cThis was our least likely place to win and we came up 6,000 votes short.”<\/p>\n

He added: “There is a tidal wave going on in the UK at the moment. We have seen Reform victory after Reform victory.”<\/p>\n

In the election campaign, Mr Banks said he would use the mayor role to \u201caudit the hell out of the local councils.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also promised to shut down the West of England Combined Authority Office, announcing in recent days he said he would “sack the 400 people who are just shuffling paper around doing nothing.”<\/p>\n

The election campaign also saw him double down on his comments calling Bristol a \u201clittle Somalia\u201d in 2017, blaming Somalis for crime in the city when asked about his comments. Crime figures do not show this to be the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"‘Bristol and Bath should not be natural Reform territory and we aced it’News John Wimperis Local Democracy Reporter…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":67735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,748,393,4884,10751,285,10299,16,15,14142],"class_list":{"0":"post-67734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-local-elections","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-south-gloucestershire","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-west-of-england-combined-authority"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114436897948536836","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=67734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/67735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=67734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=67734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=67734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}