What Will Fergie Do For Us?

Will Bristol’s new Mayor do anything for the city’s students?

A search for ‘students’ on new Mayor George Ferguson’s website returns zero results.

‘University’ doesn’t yield much more – although it will illuminate you with the information that ‘Fergie’ is in fact an alumnus of Bristol University. But does that mean anything for us as a student body?

And – to ask a wider question – does politics, particularly mayoral politics, really register on the radar of your average Bristol student?

Without endeavouring to make any gross generalizations, students here are not famed for their political activism. Perhaps in the days of David Nicholls’ Starter for Ten and the campaign for nuclear disarmament people got a little more hot under the collar.

These days? The elephant in the room of student political interest is the coalition’s recent hike in fees from £3,000 to £9,000 a year – something which two thirds of current students have managed to cannily slip under the wire for.

Even those who should be concerned by the fees rise seem unconcerned. Looking at the just-got-back-from-Laos Freshers living it up in Wills, I’m not sure they’ve even noticed.

When approached, some students were vaguely aware of the recent elections and were able to make encouragingly well-informed comments. How it was a shame that the ‘hunky’ Labour candidate Marvin Rees didn’t get in but that this Fergie chap also looked like a genial man with his penchant for those ‘fetching’ red trousers.

The conversation usually petered out after that.

It seems to me the election was more of a personality contest, particularly as Ferguson stood as an independent candidate, free from the shackles of party politics.

Since the referendum for a directly elected mayor in Bristol went through, this town has broken away from highly politicized campaigns.

No one I came across bothered with the ‘palaver’ of voting. Just 28% of Bristol’s electorate as a whole made it to the polling stations. A number of the candidates – Fergie included – didn’t strive to make any solid claims, particularly when it came to students.

Martin Rees, on the other hand, pledged to “stand up for students…and stop them being ripped off by introducing a tenants charter and a register of good landlords.”

But Rees’s smooth party image and visionary pledges were simply not enough: perhaps we’d heard it all before – in fact, we had heard it all before. Nick Clegg, anyone? Stop us being ripped off indeed. Look how that one turned out.

We are now a town that has, according to Ferguson, been “set free from the party antics of politicians.” Perhaps, for the politically disillusioned Bristol student body, this is just the thing we need to hear.

(Edit: Originally, this article incorrectly named David Lodge, not David Nicholls, as the writer of Starter For Ten)