Richard Parker Interview: I Don't Care About A Brand, I Care About Values
10 min read
As West Midlands Combined Authority mayor Richard Parker approaches the end of his first year in office, he talks to Nadine Batchelor-Hunt about predecessor Andy Street, bin strikes, and his desire for a ‘pragmatic’ relationship with Westminster. Photography by Tom Pilston
Birmingham has an undeserved reputation for being unattractive, but it has its fair share of what might be politely termed “functional” architecture. The building that houses the office of Richard Parker, the new West Midlands Combined Authority mayor, for instance, is a shabby 1970s block in the Newtown area, which could do with a lick of paint.
Speaking to The House in this office, Parker says he is seeking to improve the city’s image – a challenge amid bin strikes that have led to reports of “cat-sized” rats scurrying through the streets.
“The damage it’s doing to the reputation of the city concerns me,” he says. While his role means he has little influence over the issue, he expresses dismay about a “media frenzy” on the topic that is intent on “running this place down”.
“A really good offer has been made,” Parker says of the pay offer by the local Labour council to striking bin men. “We just need both parties to sit down and get to an agreement. You can’t do that if you go in with negotiations about negotiations – there needs to be a bit of give.”
“I went out to one of the inner-city areas, Sparkhill, and I joined a group of 70 volunteers – part of a group of called the Sparkhill Litter Busters,” he explains.
“The feedback they gave me was – while some communities suffered – it was being exaggerated, and what they were really upset by was some major media outlets going there and being really disappointed when there wasn’t rubbish.”
He also accuses the Conservatives of “exaggerating the position” and using the strikes as “a political football”.
“I’m not saying it’s not been serious for some people,” he adds. “I am pleased that the council and the government are working together with other stakeholders to clean the streets.”
Parker has big ambitions for the West Midlands, which has been his home for 40 years, after he left his native Bristol and completed an economics degree at the University of Leicester.
Unlike his predecessor, Andy Street, and even Labour’s last candidate for West Midlands mayor Liam Byrne, he is a fresh face on the public political scene, after a successful career at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which saw him rise to partner.
Despite being relatively unknown compared to other mayoral counterparts like Andy Burnham and Sadiq Khan, one year in he looks at home.
“We’re beyond that, thankfully,” says Parker with a smile when asked whether he still feels as though he is finding his feet in his relatively new role.
Parker’s urge to distance himself from the last man that had his job – and highlight his shortcomings – is striking.
“He campaigns not as a mayor, or Conservative mayor, but around ‘Brand Andy’,” he says. “I want to be known more for the values I’ve got and the priorities I want to deliver… My personal association with those is really, really important.
“But I also want to be known for, respected for, the way that I work across this region – work with others to get things done.”
I want to be known more for the values I’ve got and the priorities I want to deliver
Parker has not had the personal brand power his predecessor had both in campaigning and in office. During last year’s mayoral race, much of Street’s campaign material contained little reference to his then-governing Conservative Party – instead, the focus was on himself, with leaflets green rather than his party’s trademark blue.
It might have been unsurprising given his party’s polling, but Parker perceives it as a lack of collaboration with others. He says one of the biggest changes he made upon becoming mayor was holding meetings with the head of the councils in private to avoid descending into political point scoring in a public forum.
Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Sandwell and Coventry councils are Labour-run, while Walsall and Solihull have Conservative majorities. Dudley currently has no overall majority for any party after the Conservatives lost control of the council in recent years.
“I now meet all of them once or twice a month to discuss the most important issues affecting the region… almost like a Cabinet-style conversation,” says Parker.
“After the first one I did, I couldn’t believe they’d never met in that forum before. One of them wrote to me to say: ‘Thank you very much for the most important or useful meeting we ever had, and thank you for opening up the combined authority in a way we could have only dreamed of’.”
He is critical of Street’s time in office, claiming: “It was driven by his own personal motives, or the deals he did, or the transactions he wanted to carry out, and a very bilateral way with leaders. And most of those transactions were with leaders of his own party.”
Parker does praise his predecessor for putting the West Midlands “on the map”, however.
“He was the person who started to bed in and get the West Midlands to understand the role of mayor. He just did different things and went about them in a very different way than I do.”
The son of a docker and a school secretary, Parker says his upbringing and background was the biggest influence on his decision to both get involved with the Labour Party and to pursue a career in politics.
“I grew up in a very white, working-class area of Bristol,” he says. “When I was there, hardly anyone went to university, apart from the odd son and daughter of a senior teacher.” He went to the same school as Darren Jones, now shadow chief Treasury secretary, albeit at a different time.
“I left school at 16 with some decent O-levels, and someone I worked with just said: ‘Why aren’t you going to university?’ And I said: ‘I don’t really know anyone who goes to university.’ So, he encouraged me to go back to do A-levels a year later – that’s what changed my life.”
Despite being the mayor for the second biggest mayoralty in the country now, Parker says he didn’t have “great political ambitions” when he first started working with Labour in a more “informal” role while at PwC. He had already filled a contact book with a group of people now at the party’s commanding heights while at the firm – including Rachel Reeves.
“My career took off advising on big capital programmes during the Blair-Brown era, and that was probably a point in time of life where what I wanted to do professionally, what I was interested in personally, and what was good for the firm, all sort of coalesced.”
“In 2010, the head of the firm [PwC] wanted me to run their relationship with the Labour front bench in opposition, so 2010 to 2015 I spent probably one or two days a week with the Labour Party,” says Parker.
“I got to know lots of the new intake, including the chancellor of the exchequer, members of the cabinet at that point in time – and I worked on the housing review which Sir Michael Lyons led for Ed Miliband, and got to know lots of folk... I suppose lots of relationships that I’ve got now were founded, built on, during that period.”
Eventually, he was coaxed out of the backroom and into the political spotlight.
“Two or three years ago, I started to have conversations about doing something more political, and conversations with a lot of people around the region about that best role: should I run for Parliament?
“But I think the view is that, having lived here the last 40 years, having put the combined authority together, having had relationships with lots of businesses in the region… that was really the journey into the role.”
Unlike his Labour counterparts in London and Manchester, who have regularly clashed with the party in Westminster, Parker says he prefers to have “difficult conversations” with government in private.
“I’ve been publicly supportive of the government, and not just for the sake of it – I think it’s approaching big issues the right way. But when we’ve had more difficult conversations, I’ve had those privately. We get that that’s the way to resolve issues.”
While Parker says he continues to “hope” there will not be “public disagreement” with Westminster, he emphasises “the region comes first” for him.
He is proud of his relationship with No 10, citing recent announcements made by government on the Zero Emission Vehicle (Zev) mandate as one example.
“Recently, I wrote to Keir, the Prime Minister, around the issues of the impact of tariffs on the car industry here, JLR [Jaguar Land Rover]. The following Monday, the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer were here, in Solihull, on a visit,” he says with a grin.
That day, Keir Starmer revealed the government would be changing the Zev mandate to ease pressure on the industry.
“That’s the sort of positive, constructive, responsible, realistic, pragmatic relationship you need with the government,” Parker concludes.
My predecessor’s tantrum over HS2 didn’t result in more resources for this region
“The best way I can succeed for this region is to have a really good relationship with government,” he emphasises. “If you use my predecessor [as evidence], his tantrum over HS2 didn’t result in more resources for this region. In fact, that difficult relationship he had with the previous government meant that he wasn’t even consulted on some of that stuff. To date, I would say that relationship with the government goes both ways.”
And while he takes a perhaps more low-key approach than other Labour mayors in England, Parker describes his relationship with them as “positive”.
“About a year in advance of the elections, the Labour mayors in place and all the Labour candidates met once a month with members of the Cabinet. Sue Gray at the time was helping facilitate those meetings. They were really good,” he recalls.
“It was just great to start to build those personal relationships that continue to exist today. We’ve got a mayoral meeting later on, Jacqui Smith today will be joining, most of them will be online, and we continue to meet once a month.
“We’re on WhatsApp groups where we share insight and understanding, and we bring issues to bear to discuss with the government that are really important to us.”
Despite the growing number of Labour mayors, the threat of independent candidates eating into Labour’s vote share is one that cannot be ignored – and is what contributed to Parker’s slender majority last year.
Local candidate Akhmed Yakoob ran his campaign focusing on the issue of Gaza, picking up around 11 per cent of the vote. Ayoub Khan, who ran a similar campaign as an independent candidate for MP in last year’s general election, won his contest in Birmingham Perry Barr.
But Parker seems relaxed about the issue when asked about it, saying his priority is to “not to be divisive” and to “behave in the right way”.
“When I was out there campaigning, what struck me visiting some of our communities, and particularly some of the most disadvantaged communities, is that they thought the messaging from the independent candidate was damaging. It was actually creating division between our communities and playing on people’s vulnerabilities, and I won’t do that.”
Would he ever consider entering Westminster one day? Parker gives his frankest answer yet:
“Not at all.”
“My only hope, my only ambition, is to do the very best I can for this region,” he tells The House. “It’s a fantastic role, and I get enough of Westminster in this role… I want to do my very best for this region. And if we do the very best for this region, I’ll be doing the very best for the country too.”
