Sir Ed Davey says Hull and East Yorkshire voters 'want to send Starmer a message on winter fuel'

It is expected to be a rare four-way race between Labour’s Margaret Pinder, the Conservatives’ Coun Anne Handley, Lib Dem Coun Mike Ross and Reform UK’s Luke Campbell.

Speaking to The Yorkshire Post ahead of the Liberal Democrats’ spring conference in Harrogate today, Sir Ed said he is confident that Hull City Council leader, Coun Ross, can become the party’s first metro mayor.

“It's looking very promising,” Sir Ed said, “and people are very angry with Labour, particularly on things like the Winter Fuel Payment.

“People are actually saying to us, we want to send Sir Keir Starmer a message and you're the ones to do it.

“You're the only ones who can beat Labour here. We seem to be gaining from all sides.

“We're not being complacent but if you look across the two councils, we've got easily the largest number of councillors.”

The Liberal Democrats control Hull City Council and also have a presence in the other local authority, the East Riding of Yorkshire, where the Conservatives are the largest party.

MPs across the region are split between Labour and the Tories, while in the polls Nigel Farage’s Reform UK is surging.

However, Sir Ed claims activists on the ground say it is a battle between his party and Labour.

“I was up there last week talking to Mike, talking to local people, knocking on some doors, and we are quietly confident that we got the best chance of winning,” he said.

“In Hull we've been beating Labour and the Tories are nowhere in Hull.

“In the East Riding, obviously the Conservatives have got quite a bit of presence there, but they are very demotivated and a lot of that former Conservative vote is coming across to us.”

Sir Ed believes that his party can take advantage of a loss of trust amongst rural voters in both Labour and the Conservatives.

“I don’t really think Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour Government really get rural communities and the countryside,” he said.

“We saw that with the family farmer’s tax, we’ve had the overnight change of the environment scheme.

“You see farming communities losing faith, and they had lost faith in the Tories, they had felt betrayed.

“We're finding a lot of rural communities coming to us, and that's one of the reasons I'm confident that Mike's got a great chance.”

After a record number of Liberal Democrat MPs being returned last July and Harrogate hosting the Lib Dem spring conference, Sir Ed said he wants to use this as a springboard for a greater presence in Yorkshire.

“We’ve been really pleased with recent success in Yorkshire, obviously with Tom Gordon in Harrogate and Knaresborough at the general election.

“But if you look at what we’ve been doing in Sheffield, places like Barnsley, places like Hull in particular, we have been advancing and winning councils and an MP.

“We've got ambitions to do far more, I’m really keen to make sure that the Liberal Democrat voice in Yorkshire is heard loud and clear, building on our success.”