Row over Labour leaflet engulfs race to be the next mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough

A row has engulfed the mayoral election campaign in Cambridgeshire, prompting accusations from voters of “hypocrisy” and “shoddy behaviour”.

It arose after the Labour Party posted leaflets through doors stating that Paul Bristow, the Conservative candidate for mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, “lives in Hertfordshire” and asking voters: “Shouldn’t he live here?”

Mr Bristow responded by confirming that he lives in Wansford, near Peterborough, having moved there recently from central Peterborough, a city he previously represented as MP.

He explained in a letter, posted on social media, that he also owns another home near St Albans in Hertfordshire, which he keeps for “personal, family reasons” – in particular, so that he can see his daughter from a former marriage for a couple of days a week, something he had previously explained in a radio interview following similar claims by current Labour mayor Dr Nik Johnson.

In the letter to Labour’s new candidate for mayor, Cllr Anna Smith, he wrote: “Your decision to put a claim that you know to be false through people’s doors is not only dishonest, but forces me to disclose my family’s private circumstances to a much wider audience.

“My eldest daughter lives in St Albans with my ex-wife. Under our shared custody arrangement, at the start of each week, I need to be with my daughter in the evening. I travel down for that purpose, then return in the morning after dropping her off at school. The rest of the week, I am already here. The suggestion that I don’t live in Wansford and I’m not local is absurd. I moved to Cambridgeshire at the age of five.

“Playing politics with my family life is desperate and beneath you.”

And he added: “We all try to do the right thing by family and I’m just trying to be a good dad.”

The Cambridge Independent asked Cllr Smith and the Labour Party for their response to the letter.

A Labour spokesperson replied that Mr Bristow owns a “mansion” on the outskirts of St Albans and noted that it was not on his last register of interests as a MP. Since MPs do not need to declare properties used wholly for their own personal residential use, Labour suggested this led to “questions as to whether the address near St Albans was indeed his primary residence”.

The Labour spokesperson said: “The Conservative candidate for mayor claims he lives locally but it looks like he lived 70 miles away in St Albans while he was MP for Peterborough.”

Suggesting the property was too valuable “to only spend a night or two a week in it”, she added: “He’s taking the voters for a ride. The question the electorate need to ask themselves is, ‘do we want a part-time mayor who will commute, when he feels like it, to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough from his mansion in Hertfordshire, or do we want a full-time mayor who lives and works in the area?”

But the campaign tactic came under fire on social media.

Clare King, a former Cambridge city Labour group media officer, reposted a 2023 clip of Cllr Smith signing up to the Jo Cox Civility Pledge, promising respectful politics, at Cambridge City Council.

Clare tweeted: “We should all call out this hypocrisy because it demeans our democracy and I cannot see a single excuse for the leaflet.”

Sam Davies, a former independent councillor, described it as “shoddy behaviour”.

And county councillor Stephen Ferguson, who stood as an independent in the General Election last year, tweeted: “Honestly it makes me not want to do it anymore. Although there are many wonderful people in politics (from all sides), watching decent people put their principles aside ‘for the good of the party’ sickens me.”

Another voter, Stuart Lock, wrote on X: “I was a Labour Party member until January, I recently delivered leaflets in Hartford for a local Labour candidate, and I won’t be voting for someone who campaigns like this.”

This week, Mr Bristow told the Cambridge Independent: “It’s so dismaying that Labour continues to make personal attacks on me and my family. Anna Smith knows that I live here, in Wansford. She knows that I grew up here and she knows why I have another property.

“This is really simple: where my daughter lives should not be an issue at this election. It’s horrible, desperate stuff. Politics in Cambridgeshire has become toxic and broken.”

Also standing for election as mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough on 1 May are Liberal Democrat Lorna Dupré, Green candidate Bob Ensch and Reform UK’s Ryan Coogan.