A strong mayor should be able to lift Bristol into the global elite of cities, Labour mayoral candidate Marvin Rees has told business leaders.
He said he had looked at how other non-capital cities around the world had set themselves apart from their rivals, such as Dallas and Austin in Texas and, if elected, promised to do the same for Bristol.
Speaking at a lunch staged by law firm DAC Beachcroft and executive recruitment consultancy Moon, he said Bristol was a city of disparate parts.
“We have world-class industries and businesses, world-class universities and world-class arts and music. Our challenge is to bring all those parts together to put Bristol on the world stage. Standing still is not an option.”
He vowed to work together with businesses and business organisations across the city to get the message out nationally and internationally that Bristol is a great place to run a business.
The former BBC reporter, who has lived and studied in the US including a period at the Ivy League Yale university, said one of the worst aspects of the city was the lack of aspiration which permeated all parts of the community.
“When I came back from the US I was told by someone senior in the organisation I was working in that, having been to Yale, there was nothing for me in Bristol now and I should look elsewhere. What a poverty of ambition,” he said.
“We must create a new way of doing things in this city. We need a different way of ‘doing Bristol’.
Mr Rees warned against expecting the elected mayor, who will take office after the November 15 election, to solve all the city’s problems straight away.
“The mayor won’t be some kind of messianic figure with all the answers in his back pocket,” he told the business leaders. “It will be a facilitating role, bringing other people in and also looking 30, 40 or 50 years ahead.
“We all need to ask ourselves the question ‘What kind of city do we want Bristol to be?’ ”
Mr Rees was accompanied by shadow business secretary Chuka Umunna who spent the day in Bristol meeting businesses and party officials.
