Local elections 2025: Tory Paul Bristow set to win in Cambridgeshire | Politics | News | EUROtoday

A staggering 732 Tory councillors are predicted to lose their seats on May 1 in what is predicted to be a difficult set of native elections for the Conservatives. But amid the anticipated defeats on the poll field, one battle deep in East Anglia may present a stunning vivid spark for under-pressure chief Kemi Badenoch.

Despite final yr’s worst-ever General Election drubbing, a bombshell opinion ballot has predicted the Conservatives will snatch again the Cambridgeshire mayoralty in a shock Tory achieve from Labour. A Labour Together survey in March put former Peterborough MP and Tory candidate Paul Bristow forward on 31% to Labour’s 27%, with the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK on 20% and 13% respectively. The path to victory is much from clear. A small shift within the Reform or Lib Dem vote may take votes off both the Tories or Labour and drastically alter the ultimate consequence.

But a Bristow win in Cambridgeshire might be the spotlight of an in any other case dreary evening for the Conservatives and provides the Tories hope that each one will not be misplaced.

When I met Bristow on a sunny day in Peterborough (I requested to interview his opponents however solely heard again Reform), he was in a preventing temper and never ready to take his defeat by simply 118 votes final yr mendacity down – even when he was brutally trustworthy about his celebration’s failings.

“This was the worst-ever electoral performance for the Conservative Party,” he stated of final yr’s nationwide ballot. “We’ve got to start from that premise.

“We were too busy internally squabbling and talking to ourselves. That’s what we’ve got to get right – and you get that right by knocking on doors, talking to people and asking them questions about what will it take to regain the support of those who’ve traditionally voted Conservative.

“That’s what I’m doing on the doorstep each and every day.”

A fast have a look at Bristow’s X feed definitely gives the look he’s busy urgent the flesh in a bid to beat Labour’s Anna Smith, the Liberal Democrats’ Lorna Dupre and Reform’s Ryan Coogan.

The day after I noticed him in Peterborough, he visited a potato manufacturing facility in Thriplow, South Cambridgeshire, earlier than dashing again north to pound the streets of Dogsthorpe, Peterborough.

Many of his ex-colleagues within the House of Commons left politics totally after July. Yet Bristow instantly jumped again into the fray to marketing campaign for what he rightly factors out can be a a lot greater job than being an MP.

Whoever wins will oversee a county of contrasts with a inhabitants of almost 1,000,000. Beside the rich rural villages of South Cambridgeshire and the tech hall of Cambridge are areas of deprivation in locations like Wisbech.

Bristow joked that one in every of his main marketing campaign pledges to carry gentle rail to Cambridge means nothing to the northern, rural components of the county. “I might as well be calling for light rail on the moon,” he quipped.

“Why have I decided to come back into it? I felt four and a half years was not enough for the things I wanted to do.

“I want to show now what a Conservative mayor who’s going to focus on a handful of small things that have a demonstrable impact on people’s lives and do them very well can achieve.”

With dire nationwide ballot rankings, campaigning as a Conservative proper now’s powerful.

Bristow’s Reform opponent believes he has a shot at victory. “People are desperate for change,” stated Coogan.

“People on the doorstep are absolutely in a state of panic about what the councils are pushing through.

“Politicians have eroded trust over time with just consistent messages where they’re reading a brief in the morning and then doing absolutely nothing about it.”

But Bristow stated: “The first thing you’ve got to do is appear that you’re up for it. Don’t blame the electorate for voting in the way they did last time, but understand.

“Once you understand, once you show contrition, and once you show you’re up for it and show how the Conservative Party has changed, then you deserve to be heard again.

“That’s what I think the party need to do at Westminster but it also starts in places like Cambridge and Peterborough.

“If I can show what Conservatives can deliver in terms of politics in a geographical area, then it’s the building block for us to come back.”

Talk to even just some folks in Peterborough and it’s clear what they need from their mayor.

I skilled as a younger journalist within the metropolis 20 years in the past. Since I left, the Queensgate Shopping Centre has misplaced its John Lewis and M&S.

One over-65-year-old I spoke to was Angela, who didn’t wish to give her full identify. She stated: “When John Lewis went, that was the nail in the coffin really. It has had a big knock-on effect. The city centre has deteriorated.”

Businessman Salih Ekmekeioglu stated issues are so dangerous he may not renew the lease on his Westgate Grill premises when it expires subsequent yr.

“Unfortunately, all the big businesses are leaving the town centre now,” stated the 54-year-old.

“People aren’t coming to the town centre any more.”

He thinks Bristow’s concept for extra free parking is the important thing that would unlock Peterborough’s potential.

Salih is a part of the Peterborough Positive enterprise enchancment district that has introduced free Sunday parking to the Queensgate. He stated it helped enhance gross sales by 27%.

The perceived decline in components of the county is definitely felt by Reform’s candidate. Coogan stated the explanation he stood was as a result of he was “fed up with seeing total decline in Cambridgeshire”.

“Everywhere you look, you cannot say that anything is actually working for anybody,” he stated.

Bristow’s opponents have stated they’re confused about how he pays for his massive concepts, corresponding to dualling the important thing A47 and A10 roads, contemplating he has dominated out elevating the mayoral principle on council tax.

Coogan stated: “The Conservatives in this campaign are promising so much that just cannot be delivered. None of it can be delivered within the constraints of the budgets and cash available.”

Bristow described criticism of freezing the mayoral principle as a “red herring”, given the £11.2million raised by the £36-a-year cost for a Band D family in 2025-26 is a tiny quantity within the context of public spending.

“How I’m going to fund these big infrastructure challenges is the same way they’ve been funded in Birmingham, in Manchester and Tees Valley,” he stated.

“That’s by using the ability to borrow against your expected revenue to unlock projects and then combine the rest of it either with public money from government or private money from the private sector.

“It’s not going to be paid for by me putting a few pence on the mayoral precept.”

He was adamant that taxes nationally are far too excessive and that the answer is a “relentless focus on making the public sector more productive – doing a lot fewer things, but doing them better”.

Labour’s nationwide failure to take action, as he sees it, is damaging its possibilities in Cambridgeshire, he thinks.

“Do I think there’s any love for Labour? No, not at all,” he stated. “That’s why they’ve immediately plummeted in the polls and why people are so disappointed initially.”

He stated there was a backlash in opposition to Labour in Cambridge, the place it has historically been robust however has irritated many with a proposed congestion cost.

“Not everyone is how you would imagine them to be in Cambridge – they’re not all cyclists eating avocado on toast, delicious as that may be,” stated Bristow.

“They want to see someone who’s going to say no to a congestion charge for Cambridge, because the solution of the Left is always to try to penalise people to get them out of their cars.

“I think there’s a reason their support is plummeting in every poll – it’s because I think people have seen a party that’s not ready for government in many ways and one that’s been a bit vindictive, going after those people who they don’t traditionally see as supporting them.”

Coogan has additionally observed anger in the direction of Labour in its heartlands. But many Tories are extra frightened about the specter of Reform and would love their celebration to maneuver additional to the Right.

On Reform, Bristow urges colleagues “not to get overly wound up on their ideological or their party political positions”.

“We can’t control what Nigel Farage does, so why worry about it?” he requested.

“You have to respect and understand why people are voting Reform. The same goes for the Liberal Democrats.

“No one in Cambridge is voting for the Liberal Democrats because they want Ed Davey to become prime minister.

“The reason people are voting for Reform and Liberal Democrat is because they’re not the Conservatives or Labour. They’re not voting Liberal Democrat or Reform because they endorse everything in their manifestos or are ideologically aligned to them.

“While it’s a protest vote … we can’t just dismiss it as that. We’ve got to understand why it’s a protest vote. It’s because they’re not us – that’s what we need to deal with.

“We just have to focus on ourselves and being a decent alternative to a Labour government and the votes will come.”

David Wheeler, a resident of the Werrington and Gunthorpe space who’s contemplating voting for Bristow, maybe proves the candidate’s level.

“The former MP did a reasonable job as a constituency MP,” stated the 77-year-old.

“I didn’t vote for him and I’m not necessarily in favour of his views, but I recognise he was active and did things for Peterborough.”

Westgate Grill proprietor Salih, who we met earlier, equally stated he didn’t know a lot about politics however supported Bristow due to his actions.

If Bristow wins on May 1, it’ll absolutely give the Tories hope.

But maybe the largest lesson will probably be that getting hung up on Nigel Farage’s newest broadside or Labour’s mishaps is a idiot’s errand.

As David and Salih present, many citizens couldn’t care much less about political events and their ideologies. They simply need somebody who will doggedly battle for his or her pursuits.

Maybe the important thing to successful in politics is extra easy than it appears.