Battleground Yorkshire: Selby by-election was a warning sign of political change in North Yorkshire

Despite Labour's lead coming predominantly from York voters, the party was broadly neck-and-neck with the Conservatives in the rest of North Yorkshire, an area where it failed to win a single seat in 2019.

The region is home to majorities in excess of 20,000 for the Conservatives, with signs pointing to a difficult battle in seats where they had not expected to do much campaigning to win.

"It's a momentous result that we're extremely pleased about," says Keir Mather, the Labour MP for Selby and Ainsty who is attempting to hold his seat following a favourable change in boundaries at this election.

"The mayoral race was a really interesting opportunity to test the water and see how voters were feeling.

"It's only been 11 months since my by-election, and there was a palpable feeling there that people didn't just want change and want a fresh start for their area, but they're actually willing to go out and vote for it.

"And it does seem that that energy, that desire to do things differently, has kind of carried over over those months to the North Yorkshire mayoral contest, and it means that we've been winning in places that we never thought possible. "I think it's an enormous endorsement of where the Labour Party has got to and how much we've changed since 2019.

"But I think it also really speaks to the fact that voters across North Yorkshire are looking for a party that really is speaking to their lived concerns."

Labour's victory came as a shock to many in Westminster, not only because it was in "Rishi Sunak's backyard" but because Labour ran an interestingly quiet campaign.

In contrast to the Conservative candidate who ran on a swathe of ambitious, often quirky, policies that seemed somewhat at odds with his national party, Labour stuck to its brand as a party, and saw several visits from top shadow cabinet ministers to put the party's national platform to voters across the county.

Mr Mather says: "I think there's a deep vein of political pragmatism that runs through politics in North Yorkshire, there's very much like, tell me what you think

I'll tell you what I think in return, and then we'll get on with it and do some politics together.

"I think David Skaith [Labour's new mayor] very much embodies that style of politics."