Reform UK leading YouGov poll to win Hull and East Yorkshire mayoralty

This is the first poll for Hull and East Yorkshire to be released and shows Mr Campbell on 35 per cent, with Lib Dem candidate Coun Mike Ross second on 21 per cent and Labour candidate Margaret Pinder trailing with 20 per cent.

Meanwhile, Tory candidate Coun Anne Handley is on 15 per cent, Green candidate Kerry Harrison on 7 per cent and Yorkshire Party co-leader Rowan Halstead on 3 per cent.

The poll indicated that Mr Campbell was ahead amongst people who had already voted by post, and found he was taking 25 per cent of Conservative voters from the 2024 General Election and 15 per cent of Labour supporters.

This appears to be an unassailable lead, but could be cut quite quickly if people decide to engage in tactical voting.

This is because the contest on May 1 is an extremely rare four-way race - between Labour, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems and Reform UK - which could be decided by a few hundred votes.

It will see the whole of Yorkshire and the Humber be represented by metro mayors, with Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner calling the election “the final piece of the devolution jigsaw” for the region.

The mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire will oversee a combined authority, which will include the Hull and East Riding councils.

They will have the power over areas such as transport, adult education and housing, while the councils will still deal with things like bin collections and council tax.

‘Our region has missed out’

One of the architects of the devolution deal, Coun Handley, leader of the East Riding of Yorkshire and the Conservative mayoral candidate, thinks the region has missed out on funding and investment as it hasn’t had a metro mayor.

“I could see that they appeared to be doing far better than we were,” she told me, referencing Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire.

“I thought that’s not really fair - if ever I become leader of the council I’ll do whatever I can to become one combined authority.”

Coun Handley pitched the idea to the then Local Government Secretary Michael Gove on an escalator at a conference.

She recalled: “I jumped on it at the side of him and he couldn’t get off the escalator.

“He had to listen to what I had to say and by the time he got to the bottom of that escalator he said: ‘I’ll help you to get the deal.’”

The Tory council leader then had to fight off the Labour government, who wanted to include Lincolnshire in the mayoral combined authority.

“We stood our ground - we want to be the last part of Yorkshire,” she said.

“We were the last part of the jigsaw, - it was important our seat was at that table so we could get on that journey and fight for what we want in our region.”

‘Voters want to send message to Starmer’

The other architect of the devolution deal is Hull City Council leader Coun Ross, who is the Liberal Democrat candidate.

“It’s very much about what is to come for Hull and East Yorkshire, it feels like we’re at a real moment,” he told me.

The new Labour government has promised billions of pounds of investment in the Humberside freeport, which is the busiest in the country, for a new carbon capture storage scheme.

Businesses say this will trigger around £15bn of private sector investment to help decarbonise the “Energy Estuary”, which is the country’s biggest emitter of carbon dioxide.

Sir Keir Starmer recently announced the Siemens Gamesa factory in Hull will supply wind turbine blades for Scottish Power in a contract worth more than £1bn.

But Coun Ross believes with a mayor in place, even more investment will come into Hull and East Yorkshire.

“It’s a real opportunity to be seized,” he explained, “I want to be part of that and that’s why I have put myself forward to be mayor.

“I think this is an incredible part of the country, it has a tremendous amount to offer and with a mayor we can actually make the very most of this region.”

Coun Ross has been the bookies favourite, and party leader, Sir Ed Davey, is very bullish about him becoming the first Lib Dem metro mayor.

Following a recent visit to the region, Sir Ed told me: “We are quietly confident that we have got the best chance of winning. We are really finding it is a battle between us and Labour.

“People are actually saying to us, we want to send Keir Starmer a message and you're the ones to do it, you're the only ones who can beat Labour here.

“And so we seem to be gaining from all sides.”

‘Net zero is on the ballot paper’

If you ask Labour sources about the election, they see it as a fight between themselves and Reform UK.

Their candidate Ms Pinder says: “It’s always easier campaigning in opposition than when you’re in power.

“It is difficult, but it’s difficult being in Government at the moment, and on the doorstep I’m finding people are relatively understanding of the tricky situation the Government is in.

“They know there are hard decisions to be made.”

On a recent visit to Hull, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband also admitted to me that being the governing party could potentially be a disadvantage.

“The truth is government is obviously hard, particularly in difficult fiscal times,” he said.

“But if you look at the things we're putting in place, from breakfast clubs to rights at work to GB Energy to investment in the health service, we know the country elected us for positive change, and that's what we're seeking to deliver.”

Mr Miliband said net zero “is on the ballot paper at the election”, calling both Reform and the Tories “anti net zero parties”.

He claimed: “Anti net zero means anti jobs, anti investment, anti business, and, frankly, anti the region.”

Olympic Gold medallist taking lessons from ring into politics

I put this to Reform UK candidate Mr Campbell - an Olympic gold medallist boxer from London 2012.

He doesn’t consider himself a politician, but says he’s running to be mayor to “give back to the community”.

He claimed Reform’s policies - to tax renewables and scrap clean energy grants - would “bring back oil and gas and drilling and stuff like that, which then would create more jobs or if not just the same”.

“The net zero thing, personally, I think it’s a lot more hype,” he said.

“What difference is a small little country like England going to make on the world map, when you’ve got China doing what they’re doing?”

“I don’t necessarily think that people will be worse off or be out of jobs,” he added.

The 37-year-old added that “lessons I learned in that square ring have given me more life lessons than anything else”.

He said he would take these into his political career: “You get hit, you get back up, you’ve got to stay positive, you’ve got to keep believing.”

It’s not long now until Yorkshire’s devolution puzzle is solved, just make sure you get out and vote.