‘Weight has been lifted’ after poll defeat – Bradley
LOOKING TO FUTURE WITH NEW WORK-LIFE BALANCE
BEN Bradley says he feels as though a “weight has been lifted” after losing his role as Mansfield’s MP in the General Election.
Often dubbed “three jobs Bradley” by opponents when he was holding his MP and county council roles alongside running to be East Midlands Mayor, he is now down to just one job after Mansfield returned to Labour on July 4.
Councillor Bradley first became the town’s Conservative MP in 2017 and has led Nottinghamshire County Council since 2021.
After being defeated by Labour’s Claire Ward in the battle for the new East Midlands Mayor role and losing his seat to Labour’s Steve Yemm, he now says he has a “nice balance” between home and work for the first time in years.
Speaking on Thursday after the first county council meeting since the election, he said: “I’m a very competitive person. I don’t like losing anything ever, so that is difficult.
“At the same time, I don’t feel like truthfully there was a great deal I could have done differently.
“Sometimes you just can’t stop the tide, so to speak, so I’m perfectly content that over my seven years representing Mansfield we’ve delivered a lot of investment, a lot of change and progress, particularly in education.
“It’s been nice to have a relatively normal work-life balance for a few weeks. My wife is delighted that I’ll be around with the kids over the summer. Apart from the frustration of being a very competitive person, I feel a little bit like a kind of weight’s been lifted to be honest.
“It’s been hanging over us for a long time. It’s been a lot of pressure for a long time and now you can kind of draw a line and move forward. On a personal level, whether it’s family or work or whatever, I can look ahead.”
The next county council elections are due in May next year and, asked whether he will stand in them, Councillor Bradley said it will depend on what he decides to do next in his professional life.
The county council leader said: “As it stands, yes, I enjoy the work we do here... with the kind of asterisk that says I don’t know what I’m going to do for wider work over the course of the coming months, so we’ll see.
“Obviously, through the course of seven years in Parliament, you get into a lot of issues. As a backbench MP in particular, you could be described as somebody who knows a little bit about a lot of things.
“In some ways it’s trying to pin down what I want to do in the first instance, because there’s a lot of options and a lot to look at.”
Many local Labour activists are incredibly confident that the party will take over the running of the county council in May’s elections for the first time in seven years.
On this point, Councillor Bradley said: “Nothing is a given. We’ll have a new leader [nationally], we’ll have a new direction and I hope that helps us as well. But we’re 10 months away from those elections. We’re now refocusing politically on that, and we’ll see.”