Phil Rodgers: Who are voters likely to choose as the Combined Authority’s next mayor?

I think it’s fair to say that the result of the last mayoral election in 2021 surprised a lot of people, not least its winner, Labour’s Nik Johnson. Many observers – certainly including me – thought that the previous incumbent, Conservative James Palmer, would be re-elected reasonably comfortably. However, the voting system, which gave voters a second choice vote if their first choice wasn’t in the top two, meant that he was just pipped at the post.

The graph tells the story of the last mayoral election. After the first choice votes were counted, no candidate had more than half the vote, but James Palmer was comfortably in the lead. The candidate in last place, Liberal Democrat Aidan Van de Weyer, was eliminated, and his ballot papers had their second choice votes counted. A few of his supporters hadn’t used their second vote, but most of them had, and nearly three-quarters of those went to Labour. This was enough to get Nik Johnson over the line.

The second choice vote in mayoral elections was abolished by the Conservatives in 2023, and the new Labour government has made no moves to restore it. In Cambridgeshire and Peterborough this is clearly good news for the Conservatives, as the graph of last year’s police and crime commissioner election shows. In this contest Labour were just 1.9 per cent behind the Conservatives, but there were no vote transfers from the Lib Dems to push them into the lead, leaving the Conservative candidate Darryl Preston victorious on just 38 per cent of the vote.

We won’t know for certain who this year’s candidates for mayor are until nominations close, but three have already been announced. First out of the gate was Conservative Paul Bristow, who was selected in November and has been busily campaigning away ever since. Paul is the former MP for Peterborough, who lost his seat to Labour at last year’s general election by just 118 votes.

This was a much closer result than many were expecting, despite Labour pouring resources into the constituency – partly due to the impact of a Gaza-focused Workers Party campaign, but also undoubtedly because of Paul’s tenacity and campaigning effectiveness. He has been very active in the mayoral campaign so far, producing a lot of social media content, including some paid advertising. His policies include opposition to both the Cambourne and Cambridge South East busways, support for free parking in Peterborough and St Neots, scrapping the GCP, reopening Mill Road bridge to private cars, and opposition to road pricing.

The Lib Dems were the second party to announce their candidate, with Lorna Dupré being selected in January. Lorna is currently a councillor on both the county council and on East Cambridgeshire District Council, where she leads the opposition. She has long experience in Lib Dem politics, and before moving to Cambridgeshire was joint leader of Harlow council, where she also stood for Parliament several times. Her policies include support for the NHS, fixing the roads, improving transport, protecting the environment, making housing more affordable, and investing in skills and education.

In February, the incumbent mayor Nik Johnson announced that would not after all be seeking re-election, citing health concerns amongst other factors. While this came as something of a surprise, Labour’s choice of candidate to replace him, Anna Smith, was not a surprise at all. As well as being a former leader of Cambridge City Council, Anna has long experience at the Combined Authority, where she is currently deputy mayor, and was previously acting mayor while Nik was recovering from heart surgery. Her campaign themes include potholes, buses, crime, new homes and infrastructure, access to health services, as well as jobs and training.

The Greens have just announced Bob Ensch, chair of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire Green Party and programme leader for construction industry skills initiative FutureIN, as their candidate. Their only previous mayoral candidate was Julie Howell in 2017, who won 6 per cent of the vote, but I think they might have higher hopes this time, after winning more MPs and gaining something of a higher profile at last year’s general election. The Greens will certainly hope to attract support from former Labour voters unhappy with current government policy.

So far at least, Reform UK has been the dog that didn’t bark in the nighttime, as far as the mayoral election is concerned. While they are riding high in the national polls, and certainly have the potential to have a significant impact on the campaign, there has been no sign so far of any candidate, or of much activity on the ground. It’s quite possible that we may see some Reform UK councillors being elected in Cambridgeshire this year, but without some much more effective organisation they won’t be getting anywhere near the mayor’s office.

There have never been any Independent candidates for mayor of the Combined Authority, which perhaps isn’t very surprising given the sheer size of the electorate and the resources needed to campaign effectively – candidates are allowed to spend up to about £70,000 on getting elected. It’s not impossible that there might be an Independent candidate this time, but without a high profile and a lot of campaigning effort, it’s hard to see one making much impact.

Who, then, are the voters likely to choose as the Combined Authority’s next mayor?

In the final stages of last year’s police and crime commissioner election, I was slightly startled to find myself described as ‘local election expert Phil Rodgers’ in a Labour letter to voters, which featured my prediction that Anna Smith was well placed to win. I’m not expecting to appear in any Labour letters this year, though, because as things stand I think the most likely outcome of the election is mayor Paul Bristow. My feeling is that the change in voting system, Labour’s relative unpopularity in government, and the lack of momentum behind any challenge from Reform UK, are all going to help the Conservatives. But given the turbulent state of politics at the moment, another surprising result certainly can’t be ruled out.