Brexit Bankroller Arron Banks Is Standing To Be A Reform Mayor. But Can He Win?

Even by his own standards of devil-may-care bluntness, Arron Banks has been uncompromisingly frank about his views on the elected office he hopes to win on 1 May and the level of his popularity among a good chunk of the electorate.

The self-styled “Bad Boy of Brexit”, who founded and funded the Leave.EU campaign which helped secure Britain’s departure from the European Union, is standing for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK to become regional mayor for the West of England Combined Authority (WECA) – a political fiefdom combining three council areas including the City of Bristol.

The self-made multi-millionaire, who earned his fortune from insurance ventures first started in the area, has described the mayoralty as having “very little power”.

Banks, who continues to live near Bristol, recently told an interviewer: “There’s no mistake, it’s not the sort of job where you can get a great deal done.”

The cricket-mad businessman, who has made clear his enthusiasm for the political tactics of Donald Trump and is forthright in his robustly right-wing views on issues from climate change to “wokery”, is equally candid about how he is perceived in Bristol, home to the largest share of the WECA electorate and long a bastion of support for Labour, and more lately, the Greens.

During his unveiling as Reform’s candidate at a glitzy rally in Birmingham in March, the 59-year-old somewhat jarringly told the audience of party faithful: “I’m about as popular in Bristol as a pork pie at a Bar Mitzvah.”

Reform UK Leader Nigel Farage and Arron Banks as he is unveiled as the party’s mayoral candidate in the South West, firing blue hi-vis jackets into the audience during the party’s local election campaign launch, in Birmingham (Photo: Oli Scarff/AFP)

Riding the wave of Reform’s popularity

And yet, as he seeks to ride the wave of Reform UK’s current strength in national opinion polls – one survey last week suggested that it would emerge as the single largest party if a general election was held now – Banks would appear to have a fighting chance of winning next week, or at least running his opponents from more established parties uncomfortably close.

The arch-Brexiteer has done his best to attract headlines on the campaign trail – accusing local councils of presiding over “absolute chaos”, claiming that Bristol is “really corrupt”, attacking the city’s Somali community and rejecting concerns from election chiefs over calling himself “Banksy” in his campaign literature on the basis that doing so risked treading on the toes of the Bristol-based graffiti artist of the same name.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, he has declared himself to be in a five-way race for the mayoralty alongside candidates from Labour, the Greens, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives. The incumbent mayor, Labour’s Dan Norris, who is also a Somerset MP, was this month arrested on suspicion of rape and child sex offences. He has been released on police bail while investigations continue.

But Banks is not the only one who believes that he may have a chance of delivering an electoral shock.

Several experts approached by The i Paper said the WECA mayoralty election is likely to prove a close race amid evidence of disgruntlement among voters with Labour and the Conservatives and a willingness to embrace alternative or populist agendas, including that of a party like Reform UK which is fielding some 1,600 candidates – more than any of its rivals – on 1 May.

A survey by YouGov for the WECA contest published on Friday put Reform on 18 points, narrowly ahead of the Conservatives but behind Labour (23 per cent) and the Greens (27 per cent).

The candidates standing for the West of England Combined Authority mayor: 

• Arron Banks (Reform UK)
• Helen Godwin (Labour Party)
• Oli Henman (Liberal Democrats)
• Mary Page (Green Party)
• Ian Scott (Independent)
• Steve Smith (The Conservative Party Candidate)

One pollster, speaking on condition of anonymity because their company has not done targeted surveys in the mayoralty area, said: “If you look at the national polling, we are in an era of almost unprecedented volatility, low trust and low engagement among votes.

“That is the sort of context where a candidate willing to make waves to grab attention can have an unexpectedly large effect on the final outcome. Reform UK are putting a lot of resource into the local elections and there is clearly a feeling in the party leadership that their time has come.”

Can the Brexit bad boy win?

A forecast based on models from previous election results by an independent statistician based in the WECA area has placed Reform on level pegging at 20 per cent of the vote with Labour and the Lib Dems for the mayoralty. The Greens were marginally ahead with 24 per cent.

Nigel Marriott, who has produced forecasts for previous elections, said the contest was shaping up to be “one of the most unpredictable” he has seen, with Banks potentially picking up votes in more Conservative-leaning areas outside Bristol. He said: “Reform’s share of the vote is the hardest to try and predict because they did not stand in the previous mayoral election in 2021 but I think it is certainly a five-way marginal.

“What we have to understand is the change in the political dynamic. Until now, it was difficult for polarising figures to win elections because you always needed to attract supporters who weren’t necessarily in your orbit. But now Labour and the Conservatives account for barely half the national vote and you could probably get 20 to 25 per cent of the vote and win. That is a big change in the electoral landscape.”

It is a seismic shift which seems to have helped persuade Banks to enter the political fray directly after decades in his chosen role as something of a grey eminence in British politics.

After twice unsuccessfully standing as a Conservative councillor in Basingstoke in the late 80s, he has since preferred to fund his chosen causes – he backed the UK Independence Party, and then Leave.EU to the tune of £8m through personal and business donations – and leave the frontline politicking to the likes of Farage. Even after becoming a household name during the Brexit campaign and its aftermath, Banks has largely kept away from the limelight, maintaining his businesses in Britain and South Africa while also keeping his links with the populist right.

He has faced claims about the sources of his wealth and his relationship with Russia, leading to a High Court libel battle with journalist Carole Cadwalladr which he initially lost before eventually scoring a partial victory on appeal and leaving his opponent with a £1.2m legal bill.  

The businessman insists that he is only standing on 1 May after he received a phone call from the Reform leader while watching a game of cricket in South Africa a few months ago with a glass of white wine in his hand. As the would-be mayor previously put it: “When the boss phones you and says you’ve got to do it, you do it right?”

Neither Banks nor Reform UK responded to requests from The i Paper to comment on his mayoral campaign.

Banks’ campaign style

Nonetheless, there is ample evidence that the millionaire insurance broker turned hard-charging politician – he this week posted a video of himself knocking back a mid-afternoon tequila shot while campaigning in a Bristol boozer – is approaching his task with his characteristic zeal for shaking up the status quo and attracting controversy.

As he puts it in one of his campaign videos: “I’ve never really cared what anyone thought of me. I’ve always found that speaking your mind upsets a lot of people. I don’t care.”

Among those he has upset so far are members of Bristol’s Somali community – long established by former Somali seaman who worked on British merchant ships and settled in the UK’s port cities.

Banks, who has previously referred to Bristol as “little Somalia”, doubled-down on his position earlier this month, suggesting that Home Office figures showed the city’s Somali community was 10 times more likely to commit serious crime than other communities. He said: “It’s not to say all Somalians are bad people, but in the same way that Romanians are at the forefront of criminal activities in most cities, certainly Somalians in Bristol are at the forefront of crime in Bristol.”

To date, Banks has not produced the Home Office data to which he refers. Separate figures show that while the 9,500 Somalis in Bristol make up its largest ethnic minority – accounting for 1.9 per cent of the population – they last year made up 0.7 per cent of suspects in violent or sexual crime.

One senior member of the Somali community told The i Paper this week: “Mr Banks is entitled to his opinions but it is sad if he is singling out particular small communities such as our own to get votes. Somalis have lived in Bristol for a long time – we are the carers, the NHS workers, the cleaners and the taxi drivers in this city. We need a mayor to bring people together, not make divisions.”

Indeed, Banks is putting into practice the distinctly Trumpian playbook he has long advocated – a high-octane mixture of unabashed populism, nostalgia and sharp-tongued criticism of political incumbents, all topped with a demand for tight controls on immigration.

As he put it in the “Bad Boys of Brexit” book, his account of the EU referendum campaign: “We are going to be blunt, edgy and controversial, Donald Trump-style… If BBC producers aren’t spluttering organic muesli over their breakfast tables every morning we won’t be doing our job.”

The result is Banks’ own version of the sort of blokeish, pint-waving assault on the establishment which Farage has made his trademark. As a case in point, Banks last week unveiled a celebrity backer in the shape of Marco Pierre White – an endorsement secured after an apparently boozy lunch at one of the chef’s restaurants near Bath.

Banks has also managed to lock horns with Bristol City Council after he said electoral officers had queried his use of the slogan “Banksy for Bristol” because it could infringe the copyright of the artist of the same name.

The council told The i Paper that any concerns had been limited to ensuring the candidate had used his full given name on the ballot paper.

Never one to ignore a decent row, Banks – who has indeed used the nickname “Banksy” for many years – has since turned his attentions to the artist himself, using his campaign video to suggest that the graffiti creator was “welcome any day” if he wanted to paint an image on his mansion in the Gloucestershire town of Thornbury. The i Paper has contacted the artist to ask whether it is an invitation he might accept.

All of which is good knockabout electoral fare but what of Banks’ programme should he win?

What a Banks mayoralty would look like

In common with Reform’s wider agenda, the insurance mogul says his intent is to disrupt politics in his home region.

A statue of Edward Colston was toppled and dropped into Bristol harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest rally in June 2020 (Photo: Ben Birchall/PA Wire)

Notwithstanding his reservations about the powers available to him, the would-be mayor has promised to “audit the hell” out of the councils making up WECA to expose perceived waste, reinvigorate innovation in the region which he is fond of telling listeners developed Concorde and the Great Western Railway, and invest in bus networks. He has further pledged to put back on display the statue of Edward Colston, the Bristol merchant and slave trader whose effigy was tipped into the city harbour by protesters in 2020.

He has also suggested that a large concert venue should be opened at Cribbs Causeway, the large shopping and leisure mall on the edge of Bristol, and is backing plans to move Gloucestershire County Cricket Club – which Banks has expressed an interest in taking over – to a new purpose-built ground beside the M4.

Doubtless aware that his own substantial bank balance dwarfs that of any public servant, he has also said he will donate the mayoral salary – currently about £90,000 – to charity and not claim any expenses.

But the fact remains that Banks, perhaps even more so than his party leader, sees himself more than ever as the rogueish outsider determined to take a scythe to the state, liberalism and the two-party hegemony of Labour and the Conservatives.

He recently described how Farage had asked him to stop referring to his wish to “destroy” the Conservatives. Recalling the exchange, Banks said: “I said what do you want me to say? There was a 10-second gap and he said, well you can say you want to ‘replace’ them. I said I’ll stick with the ‘destroy’ thank you very much.”