Reform Is The Common Enemy In The Unpredictable Race For Hull And East Yorkshire Mayor
The Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democrat candidates all see Reform as the common enemy in the Hull and East Yorkshire mayor contest (Alamy)
9 min read
The closely-fought race to become the first-ever mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire is seen as tough to call – but it is clear that Reform UK is being treated as the common enemy by all the other parties.
On Tuesday, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch admitted on BBC Radio 4 that her party is going to find it “very, very difficult” in the local and mayoral elections on 1 May. “Protest is in the air, protest parties are doing well at the moment," she said.
Nowhere is this more clear than in Hull and East Yorkshire, where six candidates are running to become the region’s first mayor. The four largest parties have a decent chance at winning, but the Tories, Labour and Liberal Democrats all view Reform as the biggest electoral threat across the region.
This is a difficult race to predict due to a number of factors: It is the first election here of its kind, the expected turnout is very low, and there is currently a very mixed picture of party support across Hull and East Riding.
In the general election last year, all the Hull city constituencies were won by Labour, while the Conservatives held on in the three rural East Riding constituencies. In the most recent local elections, the Lib Dems won majority control of Hull City Council, while East Riding of Yorkshire Council is under no overall control but is run by the Conservatives.
But now, Reform is threatening to disrupt the political landscape, and the potential appeal of Reform’s candidate – former Olympic boxer Luke Campbell – is the big unknown.
PoliticsHome analysis of the adverts being promoted by the Labour and Conservative candidates’ Facebook accounts show they are prioritising attacking Reform, rather than attacking each other.
On Labour candidate Margaret Pinder’s profile, posts have attacked Reform’s pledge to scrap net zero and repeatedly claimed that “only a vote for Labour can stop Reform”. These posts cite a graph which collates various internal Labour polls carried out over the last few months (and therefore should be taken with a slight pinch of salt). It shows Reform leading at 27 per cent, followed by Labour at 25 per cent, with the Tories and Lib Dems down at 21 per cent and 13 per cent respectively.
However, YouGov has since released the only independent poll of the contest, predicting voting intention for Reform at 35 per cent, followed by Lib Dems on 21 per cent, Labour on 20 per cent and the Tories at 15 per cent.
YouGov has published the only independent poll of the Hull and East Yorkshire mayoral contest (YouGov)
The Facebook account of Conservative candidate Anne Handley, leader of East Riding County Council, has posted ads claiming that the Reform candidate “takes his orders from Reform HQ in London, not from you”.
“They’ve picked a name that you know, but it’s all part of a London-led agenda that doesn’t match our values,” the post continued.
Speaking to PoliticsHome at the season opening of the Beverley horse races, Handley was doing her best to appear confident and relaxed. But it was clear she was nervous about the rising appeal of Reform across the region.
She said she felt Campbell was “ill-prepared” for the huge responsibility of being mayor.
“I've got no ill feelings towards the young man,” Handley continued. “But he hasn’t got the contacts or the experience, I feel like he’d be thrown into the lion’s den.
“Politics is a blinking dirty game and I don’t think Luke has got the wherewithal… He said he is a fast learner, but you cannot learn in the six weeks since being the candidate what years of knowledge give you.”
Would she feel worried if the Labour or Lib Dem candidates were to win instead? “I would be less concerned,” she admitted.
Notably, Handley and Pinder shy away from strongly criticising each other. Both women share a stereotypically blunt Yorkshire sense of humour and speak of each other in positive terms.
“People don’t want to see politicians tearing lumps out of each other,” Handley shrugged.
Pinder described Handley as “very likeable, very engaging”. “She’s local, she’s a nice woman.”
Lib Dem candidate Mike Ross is the only contender who did not grow up in Yorkshire, but he is already a well-known figure in parts of Hull, thanks to his record as leader of Hull City Council.
While out delivering leaflets to Hull residents, he told PoliticsHome that he saw himself as appealing to two key groups of voters: “Our support is a mix of those who vote for us locally because they like what I’ve done here, and those who vote for us because they don’t want the other parties to win.”
He therefore considers Reform and the Lib Dems to be in direct competition for voters who are disillusioned with Labour and the Conservatives – at a time when both of the major parties are struggling to maintain public support.
“People are a lot more sceptical of Labour than they were this time last year,” one Lib Dem campaigner added.
The Lib Dems say they are confident of their chances in this contest, given their strong presence across both local authorities in the region. But both the Tory and Labour candidates waved away the idea that Ross would be a serious contender, and neither of their campaigns have promoted paid adverts specifically attacking the Lib Dems – indicating they believe Reform is the much bigger threat.
There is also a risk that hardly anyone will turn out to vote at all. The Kingston upon Hull East constituency had the third lowest turnout in the UK in the general election last year, and Ross pessimistically told PoliticsHome that he expected the turnout for the mayoral election to be as low as between 15 and 20 per cent.
With political apathy at an all-time high, most of the candidates here are keen to distance themselves from Westminster politics. Handley joked: "If I were an MP, I probably wouldn’t last long because I’d lose the whip!"
Conservative mayor candidate Anne Handley met PoliticsHome at the Beverley races (PoliticsHome)
But Campbell has taken this to another level, repeatedly claiming on a recent BBC Radio Humberside debate that he has “not come into this for politics”. “Politics is getting in the way, it’s people talking to people to benefit the people of this region, that’s it.”
He is taking a similar attitude to the media, proving elusive when PoliticsHome attempted to secure an interview. A Reform source told PoliticsHome that Campbell was now going to focus on his campaign rather than arrange any more media appearances.
This is perhaps with good reason: in the BBC radio debate, Campbell struggled to answer some of the questions and came under fire from Pinder and Handley, particularly on the issue of net zero, with the renewable energy industry being a huge source of employment in the region.
Campbell has also failed to turn up to multiple local events in recent weeks, with the other candidates claiming that he has not turned up to pre-arranged hustings. Reform UK refused to comment on why Campbell was cancelling events.
“If he becomes mayor, the last thing we need is for him to not turn up to important meetings for the region,” Handley said.
“You are the person that's going out there to sell this region, and if you're hiding from the media now, that just doesn't bode well to me at all.”
As a former gold medallist Olympic boxer, Reform’s hope was that Campbell’s influential profile would improve his chances. While many people in Hull and East Yorkshire are clearly interested in voting for Reform more generally, many are voicing doubts over whether he has enough political experience.
“I’m not sure he has the brains for it,” one resident told PoliticsHome, while another said she thought Reform leader Nigel Farage had “used” Campbell to raise the profile of the Reform party.
However, Reform campaigners will be hoping that the strong sense of local anger directed towards the Labour government and the Conservative party will carry Campbell to victory.
Many former lifelong Labour voters in Hull and Beverley told PoliticsHome they felt “betrayed” by the government.
“I’m a bit despondent with politics at the minute… I voted for this government and I wish I hadn’t,” 49-year-old Nicola said.
38-year-old post office worker Victoria, who lives in Hull, also voted for Labour last year but said she definitely won’t ever again: “All the things they said they were gonna do, they haven’t done it.”
Carol, in her 70s, said that Labour’s responsibility to look after the vulnerable had “gone out of the window”. “I’ll go to the ballot box and put ‘no’ next to all the parties. They promise much, deliver nothing, and they lie.”
Pinder admitted that people were “not happy” with the national government, and reckoned that people would use the mayoral election to give her “a kicking” as a result.
“Westminster will do what Westminster will do,” she said. “I’m making the point that this gives me a seat at the table… I'm happy to push back.”
Both Pinder and Handley were clearly frustrated that Reform campaign leaflets in the area have often mentioned issues such as migration and NHS waiting lists – despite the new mayor having no powers to enact policies on these areas.
Campbell's rivals in Hull and East Yorkshire claim he is a novice with little political knowledge, who is deeply unsuited to being the area's first mayor. Whether voters here agree on 1 May is a different matter entirely.
