Norris v Rees Mogg – 14-year “double-job resume”.

It will be the political contest at this year’s West Country General Election – a 14-year rematch that will see two men with existing, well-paid jobs battle it out for the right to get a second job as well well paid. .

In the blue corner it will be GB News presenter Jacob Rees Mogg against, in the red corner, the man who is currently the mayor of the west of England, Dan Norris. The award will be her first job as MP for North East Somerset & Hanham – and both main contenders have indicated they will keep their existing jobs and do both at the same time.

West of England metro mayor Dan Norris was chosen by Labor this weekend to be their general election candidate for the newly created North East Somerset & Hanham constituency, staging a rematch of the 2010 general election in which he fought with conservative Jacob Rees. Mogg.

Read more: Metro mayor Dan Norris has been named as Labour’s MP candidate for the general election

Read more: Mayor of Bath to oppose Jacob Rees-Mogg in general election

The new constituency covers everything from the villages near Bristol Airport around the southern edge of Bristol, to Whitchurch Village, to Keynsham and Saltford and across the River Avon to Cadbury Heath and Hanham in the east of Bristol.

A general election is due to be called at some point this year, with commentators expecting the vote to take place next autumn. Dan Norris is currently the mayor of the West of England metro – a role he was elected to in May 2021. He is up for re-election in that role in May 2025, and when he told Bristol Live he was proposing to stand as Labour’s parliamentary candidate , he said he thought it would be possible to do both jobs at the same time.

Mr Norris pointed to other politicians – both Labor and Tory – who combined being a metro mayor with being an MP, most famously – or perhaps infamously – a role undertaken for nearly a year by Boris Johnson in the mid-2010s.

“Elsewhere in the country, other people have shown that it’s possible to do both,” Mr. Norris said, pointing to two examples. Dan Jarvis has been the MP for Barnsley since 2011 and was also the metro mayor for South Yorkshire for four years from 2018 to 2022, and Boris Johnson was mayor of London until May 2016, a year after he was also elected as Uxbridge MP in 2015.

“It’s possible for us to be both and clearly we have the convention that MPs can also be ministers – which I was – and that’s something like that – so there’s a lot of precedent for someone to be both an MP and a mayor by metro, whether for a shorter or longer period,” he added.

If the new MP for North East Somerset & Hanham is elected, Mr Norris – and the Labor Party – will obviously have to face the question of whether he will run for a second term as metro mayor in the run-up to the May 2025 regional. mayoral election, but for now Mr Norris and Labor are focused on defeating Jacob Rees Mogg.

“This election is about reclaiming Britain’s future,” Norris said. “Nothing works anymore, with the lies and incompetence of a Government that has gone astray and puts the party before the country.

“With the general election looming, more and more people are telling me they think it’s time to turn the page. This seat has oscillated between Labor and the Conservatives for 30 years. It’s the kind of seat where every vote really counts.

“Residents in the area are struggling with the cost of living crisis, can’t get a dentist appointment and want action to address the climate emergency,” he added.

2010 rerun

Mr Norris first stood for parliament almost 40 years ago – in the old seat of Northavon in 1987 and lost there and in Wansdyke – a predecessor of the NE Somerset & Hanham constituency – in 1992, before being elected for Labor in 1997. Won again. in 2001 and 2005 before the seat changed back to NE Somerset and Jacob Rees Mogg beat Mr Norris to be elected Conservative MP.

Mr Rees Mogg has won three other general elections in 2015, 2017 and 2019, while Mr Norris has been out of frontline politics, and now the pair will renew their 2010 showdown.

The world is a very different place now, in 2024, than it was in 2010. Back then, Mr Norris was the established candidate, having held roles in the New Labor Government in the 2000s and making a name for himself in the West Country. as a vocal champion of the controversial ban on hunting with dogs.

At the time, Jacob Rees Mogg was something of a cartoon candidate – his previous attempts to get elected included canvassing Scotland with his nanny and a chauffeur driving him around his Central Fife constituency in a Bentley – things that were mocked on satirical television. newscasts (and Rees Mogg later corrected, saying it was a Mercedes, not a Bentley). In 2010, his presence in north-east Somerset with his sister Annunziata in neighboring Frome was seen as a problem for David Cameron’s attempts to modernize the image of the Conservative Party.

As if to directly challenge Mr Rees Mogg’s image, Dan Norris campaigned for Labor in North East Somerset, bringing tough EastEnders actor Ross Kemp to Keynsham – something that brought the crowd out with a the day before polling day, but to no avail, as a Conservative. Jacob Rees Mogg won by a majority of just under 5,000.

Mr Rees Mogg went on to win, consistently polling around 50 per cent in the three chaotic general elections since the late 2010s, with a nominal majority of more than 14,000 – although boundary changes make any comparison meaningless.

Mr Rees Mogg wished Mr Norris and all the other candidates in the constituency well in the general election. The Tories may be tempted to highlight Mr Norris’ ‘two jobs’ move, but Labor sources have told Bristol Live they should think twice about it.

For Mr Rees Mogg also has a rather lucrative second job. As a regular presenter on GB News, his ‘State of the Nation’ show is broadcast for an hour, four nights a week – something he manages to squeeze in while representing North East Somerset constituents in Parliament .

He accepted the challenge of presenting in early 2023, three months after leaving his last Cabinet position.

The money

The salaries for all these positions are not to be sniffed at. The basic salary for an MP – which is currently won in North East Somerset by Jacob Rees Mogg – is £91,346, together with all expenses, living costs, office administration costs and travel expenses that come with it.

The West of England metro mayor’s salary is currently rising year-on-year after members of the West of England Combined Authority controversially voted to increase it recently – and is currently around £80,000, climbing to £86,000 by next year. .

But the most money will be had as a TV presenter – as an MP, Jacob Rees Mogg has to declare foreign earnings and pecuniary interests, and in February this year he recorded that GB News was paying him £750 an hour to his presentation. exchange – or more than £29,000 a month. In the year to February, he earned almost £325,000 for that gig, and at times his monthly salary topped £32,000.

Other parties

Labor is first to beat the Tories in the new North East seat of Somerset & Hanham, but the seat has not always been a two-horse race. In the 1980s the Liberals were second and in the 2019 ‘Brexit election’ in the old seat of North East Somerset, with the collapse of the Labor vote under Jeremy Corbyn, the Lib Dems almost came second again.

Ironically, the Lib Dem candidate in the 2024 version of the constituency also has a second job, albeit one that is much more standard for a politician trying to be an MP.

Earlier this year the Lib Dems announced that Dine Romero would be their party’s candidate in North East Somerset & Keynsham. She is currently the elected councilor for Southdown, a ward on B&NES council that includes South Twerton in Bath. She has also been voted in to be the current mayor of Bath, although this is a ceremonial position for which someone else is expected to be installed later this year.