Former boxer Luke Campbell has become Hull and East Yorkshire’s first-ever mayor (Alamy)
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Reform candidate and former Olympic boxer Luke Campbell has won the contest to become Hull and East Yorkshire mayor, in the second mayoral victory for Nigel Farage’s party.
Reform won a clear victory with 35 per cent of the vote, followed by the Lib Dem candidate with 27 per cent.
The results in full:
- Luke Campbell (Reform UK): 48,491 (35.82 per cent)
- Mike Ross (Liberal Democrats): 37,510 (27.71 per cent)
- Anne Handley (Conservatives): 21,393 (15.80 per cent)
- Margaret Pinder (Labour): 18,568 (13.72 per cent)
- Kerry Harrison (Green): 5,049 (3.73 per cent)
- Rowan Halstead (Yorkshire Party): 4,372 (3.23 per cent)
Former Conservative MP Andrea Jenkyns was also elected as Greater Lincolnshire’s first regional mayor, meaning Reform now has two metro mayors in the Humberside area.
Reform has so far succeeded in winning hundreds of council seats from the Conservatives, particularly across the Midlands and parts of the north of England. Reform candidate Sarah Pochin also won the Runcorn and Helsby by-election by just six votes.
The closely-fought race to become the first-ever mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire was seen as tough to call – but PoliticsHome reported that it was clear that Reform UK is being treated as the common enemy by all the other parties.
During the campaign, Campbell repeatedly said he saw politics as “getting in the way”, and the other candidates in the contest criticised him for failing to turning up to pre-arranged hustings in the region.
Conservative candidate Anne Handley told PoliticsHome she felt Campbell was “ill-prepared” for the huge responsibility of being mayor, and admitted she would be “less concerned” if her Lib Dem or Labour rivals won instead of him.
Labour have managed to hold on to three mayoralties in North Tyneside, Doncaster and the West of England – but Reform candidates came second in all three.
In a small window of good news for the Conservatives, the party won the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough metro mayor seat from Labour. The combined authority’s new mayor will be Paul Bristow, a former Tory MP who lost his seat in the Peterborough constituency last year.
Bristow won 60,243 votes, a majority of 10,596 ahead of Reform UK’s Ryan Coogan’s 49,647.
Responding to the win, a Conservative Party spokesman said: “On a very difficult night, this is a significant win for the Conservative Party.
“Labour previously held this mayoralty and won two new MPs in the region last year, so for Paul to win today shows how Kemi Badenoch’s Conservatives are already making inroads into the Labour vote.”
