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Labour candidate and current Bristol mayor Marvin Rees officially launched his 2020 election campaign today (Friday).

Dozens of Mr Rees's friends, family and supporters packed out one of the rooms at Empire Fighting Chance boxing club in Easton where the launch took place.

It was a family affair with his mum Janet and wife Kirsten both addressing the crowd about why Mr Rees should be elected for a second term as Bristol's mayor.

Mr Rees then delivered his speech explaining what he and his administration had already achieved over the last four years and announced six new pledges for his next term should he win on May 7.

Here is his speech in full:

Today I’m formally launching my campaign to be re-elected as Mayor of Bristol.

People may assume, the decision to run again is a given. It isn’t. It’s a role that comes at a price – and I’m not talking about me but my family.

People have a sense of this and often ask me if I actually enjoy the role? “What is it like?”, they ask and then sometimes, they express sympathy.

When I was first elected I shared a bit of wisdom a member of Mayor Bloomberg’s team, from when he was Mayor of New York, said to me… that the first 12 months felt like putting their mouths around a fire hydrant.

(Image: David Betts Photography)

Bloomberg himself has said nothing can prepare you for being mayor. That made me feel better, to know all I was experiencing was normal.

The best way I’ve found to describe the role is like playing rugby. Waiting to run out on those cold, windy, wet days with the large opposition stomping and shouting murder in the changing room next door while warmly dressed supporters are waiting to give you gip from the touchline. There were times I wished I had chosen a nice warm, indoor sport like volleyball. But I loved playing rugby.

I have been challenging and encouraging other people from backgrounds like mine to overcome the challenges and doubts and take up leadership positions in Bristol, and beyond. People have often responded to my call with “it's not for me” or “I couldn’t cope with the nonsense that comes with it”.

But I say to them, I love the job, and what greater honour and what greater fulfilment is there than to serve the city I grew up in and in which I am bringing up my own children in, and make it better. And we are making it better.

Cities

(Image: David Betts Photography)

I just want to say a little about what it takes to lead a city.

First, world class public sector leadership is about what you influence as much as it is about what you control. The focus is solely on the council, you leave out the many billions of pounds of influence held across the health service, criminal justice system, business and voluntary sectors. City leaders must understand that city leadership is a collective act.

Second, cities are complex and contradictory but our conversations about the city are too often smothered by simplicity. We are served up one liners, ill-disciplined reductionist arguments that move from subject to confusion to motivation to conspiracy.

We get reduced far too often to the 10 word slogan, the black and white that fits the platform of the messenger rather than the high density colour that allows us to expand into the world we really live in.

City leadership must be multi-dimensional because no decision sits in an abstract. Every single issue campaign, misses the fact that every single issue has more than one impact

In my leadership of the city, I have delivered on many issues at the same time - some shape the whole world and others the whole of a single person or a single family’s world. It grapples with the fact that sometimes, the many issues on which we have to deliver, conflict with each other, like growing the economy to deliver decent jobs for all and building homes for a growing population while reducing our energy footprint on the planet.

I have shaped my leadership, taking responsibility for both my decisions and the consequences of those decisions - both intended and unintended. This means making things better and occasionally minimising the harm.

Leadership

We have built a leadership fit for the challenge of a modern city in a modern world.

You will see it in the most diverse political leadership the city has ever seen, in gender, race and class.

And you will see it in the most inclusive leadership culture the city has ever experienced. Through the Bristol One City office we released the vision and talents from our communities, voluntary sector, business, unions, civil society and public sector partners to write the one city plan.

I spent my childhood resisting identities people wanted to put upon me – attempting to use my race, class and my single mum to cast me into an identity limbo and cast me down.

(Image: David Betts Photography)

It is one of the reasons I am so expansive in my approach. Those categories I was asked to choose between were significant and they matter, but they weren’t enough to define the fullness of me.

It still happens today as there are attempts to define who I am while failing to grasp the complexities in me, them and the world that’s shaped us all and our relationships.

The values I have brought to my leadership come from these experiences. I hope aspiration together with a commitment to justice and compassion. I wear it on my sleeve.

I can be no more or less than I am. And this is what I am. This has always been and remains, my offer.

Many times I have said how much I want to celebrate the great things of Bristol, the strong economy, tech sector, foodie and arts offering. But I will do so while recognising that tens of thousands of people do not share in that story and to ignore them would be a double insult.

The first is in leaving them behind. The second would be to confirm that their story of being left behind wasn’t worthy of being recognised.

Delivery

Look around the city today. You can see cranes around the city and you can see the change. Talk to people moving into houses, getting jobs, parents still benefiting from children’s centres and from schools being built. Talk to people who will tell you they are seeing the change.

We have delivered on all of our 2016 pledges:

- we built homes

- kept children’s centre open

- increased school places

- led a clean streets campaign that’s picking up awards and cash prizes faster than people are picking up litter,

- reviewed parking zones

- started bristol on the journey to clean energy through the city leap

- protected and developed our cultural offer

And we’ve done so much more, including:

Biogas buses, led the way on recycling rates, designed delivery plans for the climate and ecological emergencies, prioritised housing for women escaping domestic violence, closing school streets to cars, tackling knife crime, cleaning our air, and we are on the road to being a Living Wage city.

Continuing to deliver

And so today, I stand, with my cabinet and Labour colleagues on our record of delivery

What Bristol needs now is continuity of leadership, keeping on being the change Bristol so badly needs.

And so today, I unveil six new pledges to the people of Bristol.

Connectivity and Transport

We will deliver an underground and integrated public transport system with free travel for apprentices and students up to 25.

In the next few weeks, I will unveil my administration's 15 year plan to transform city transport forever.

The bus deal, improving infrastructure and services, with direct commuter routes, driving up patronage.



Followed by a city centre circle line of rapid buses keeping traffic out of the city centre and improving city links in each direction, enabling the pedestrianisation of the old city.



New train stations and improved frequencies,



Then the mass transit system, including four lines with underground travel.

We have laid the ground and have the vision and commitment to get Bristol moving.

Economy

We will achieve a living wage city, growing jobs in a diverse economy and building on the success of the Channel 4 Hub, with opportunity for all Bristol’s communities.

Bristol has seen the growth of the high tech sector and the creative and media sectors. Winning Channel 4 was a huge success and they are already advertising jobs. They will work with us as we continue to put inclusion and sustainability at the heart of our economic values, with jobs in all sectors.

(Image: David Betts Photography)

Environment and Sustainability

We will invest £1bn in clean energy, double the tree canopy, grow sustainable food in every ward and deliver our climate and ecological emergency plans.

We were the first city to unanimously carry the climate emergency in our council chamber… and the first city to declare an ecological emergency.

The City Leap programme will transform our relationship with energy, reducing our carbon footprint.



Growing food locally will help to tackle food poverty and will be integral to our city's commitment to achieve the gold standard in food sustainability.



Working with partners, we will invest money and land in planting trees.

Bristol is delivering the Green New Deal and working with cities around the world, through the global parliament of mayor, eurocities and c40 to tackle climate change.

Health and Wellbeing

We will enable people to live fulfilled, independent lives in their own homes for as long as possible and double the number of adults with learning difficulties we support into employment.

We have introduced technology to support independent living and Our HomeFirst service is returning people home quicker after a hospital stay while also reducing readmission.

Paying care workers the living wage and travel time and delivering a UNESCO age friendly city is more evidence of how we are delivering for our elders.

Homes and community

We will build council and social homes, building over 2,000 homes each year, of which 1,000 are affordable and reduce the number of households in temporary accommodation.

From innovation and awards, we’ve been recognised for the commitment we’ve brought to housing delivery, including the first real council house building programme in decades.

Tackling the housing crisis - with 12,000 on the housing waiting list, and over 500 in temporary accommodation - will remain our top priority. We have committed £85 million to accelerate home building, and £61 million for Goram Homes, our own housing company, while freeing up a further £15.7million to invest in building council homes.

Learning and skills

We will build new secondary schools, deliver quality work experience and apprenticeships, and deliver adult learning and youth opportunities, including two Youth Zones.

With current plans for new secondary schools we will provide the school places and choice parents want. We enabled three and a half thousand meaningful experiences of work delivered this year alone to our young people and many more are being supported into work. Two new Youth Zones, one in the north and one in the south of the city, will form a key element of our revamped youth services, delivering hope and opportunity for our children and young people.

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These six pledges I offer to the city today are the continuation of the work of the last four years. They are born out of the work already done.

And as our greatest legacy to the city will be the One City Plan, a clear intent to forge a clear path to a better city for our children and Bristolians of the future, written not just by the council but by hundreds of key city partners, it is no coincidence that my pledges match the key strands of the plan

Bristol is changing. The world is changing. Bristol’s leadership must deliver for a changing city and it must be inclusive, aspirational, just and compassionate. It must be able to see, understand, empathise and serve the many different ways people experience Bristol.

I want to end by sharing this proverb with you:

Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope

I want Bristol to be a city of hope: where irrespective of your background, you can live with a belief that there are people and opportunities committed to making your life better tomorrow.

I’m proud to stand as Mayor and continue to deliver for Bristol.

Thank you