At present, Cambridgeshire & Peterborough is the only area in the East of England with a directly elected mayor, and the present mayor is retiring. So, on Thursday 1 May 2025, the region’s 646,318 registered voters have the opportunity to choose who will lead the Combined Authority (CA) for the next four years. But with a changed voting system, a complex political geography, and three parties neck and neck in national polls, the likely outcome is very hard to predict.
The role and powers of the mayor
The Cambridgeshire and Peterborough mayor leads the Combined Authority (CA). He or she is responsible for transport, infrastructure, economic development, business, skills and regeneration, and represents the area on the UK Council of Nations and Regions.
The mayor has substantial resources, including a £20 million annual budget devolved from the central government, and powers to spend up to £800 million on local housing, infrastructure and jobs. The CA will receive £328 million over the next four years for capital spending on major projects.
The area and its politics
Like its neighbours, Norfolk and Suffolk, Cambridgeshire is a very mixed area, with two large, but very different, urban areas: Cambridge and Peterborough, surrounded by a very large rural hinterland dominated by agriculture.
Historically, the city of Cambridge has always voted to the left, with Labour and Liberal Democrats alternating in control of the city council and the parliamentary seat. By contrast, the new town of Peterborough has swung between Conservative and Labour, usually following the national pattern. The rural areas have historically voted Conservative, although support for the Liberal Democrats has been growing, especially in the area around the city.
Currently, Conservatives have the largest number of councillors, but Labour controls two of the district councils, while the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Independents each control one. The eight MPs are divided, with two Conservatives, and three each for Labour and Liberal Democrats.
The election
Previous mayoral elections have used the proportional Supplementary Vote system, but in 2022, the Conservative government changed that. So, this will be the first Mayor elected by first past the post, where the winner is simply the candidate with the most votes in a single count.
This is significant, because the last election, in 2019, was close, with a low turnout. As the chart shows, under first past the post, the Conservatives would have won easily, with 40.5% of votes cast, nearly 18,000 ahead of the Labour candidate. However, under the single transferable vote system, in a second round of counting, the Liberal Democrat candidate was eliminated, and the second preferences of his voters were added to the other two candidates. This gave a further 38,000 votes to Labour, giving Labour’s Nik Johnson the necessary support of a majority of voters.
But the changed voting system is not the only complication. When election turnout is low, the decision effectively gets made by the most committed supporters of the parties, and those who are very angry with the incumbents. So national party affiliation may count as much as local issues and policies.
When the Conservatives are polling nationally at around 23%, it would be surprising if the Conservatives could repeat their 40% vote share. This is especially unlikely since the right wing vote is now split with Reform UK. But although Reform is now neck and neck with Labour and Conservative in national polling, they seem unlikely to reach a majority here, coming from nothing with a relatively unknown candidate. However, Labour is also polling badly nationally, which may depress their vote, though as the current deputy mayor, their candidate may have an incumbency advantage. The Liberal Democrats may do well, taking disaffected Labour voters and building on their 2024 election success in Cambridgeshire when they took two Parliamentary seats from the Conservatives. The Greens have a candidate for the first time and he may take votes from Labour or Liberal Democrats.
The candidates
Unlike parliamentary elections, where candidates often come from far away, this is a very local election. All the candidates live in the area. Three are members of the current CA, one is a former local MP, and the fifth is a local businessman. The candidates are:
Paul Bristow (Conservative) served as Peterborough’s MP from 2019 until July 2024, when he lost his seat to Labour, by only 118 votes.
Ryan Coogan (Reform UK) is a businessman who has lived and worked in Cambridgeshire for over 35 years, but with no previous political involvement. He is also standing as a Reform UK candidate for the county council and East Cambridgeshire District Council.
Lorna Dupré (Liberal Democrats) is a past chair of the Scrutiny Committee of the CA. She is deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats on the county council, where she chairs the Environment and Green Investment Committee. She also leads the Liberal Democrat and Independent Group on East Cambridgeshire District Council
Bob Ensch (Green Party) currently leads the party on the CA.
Anna Smith (Labour) is currently the deputy mayor of the CA, where she sits on the Transport & infrastructure and Human Resources Committees.
Conclusion
With a change in voting system, widespread disaffection with politics and five candidates instead of three, the likely outcome is far from clear. And unlike single transferable voting, where the winner must get a majority of first, second or third preference votes, this time the winner could be elected by a tiny proportion of the electorate. If turnout was 35%, and the vote split in the proportions the parties are currently polling, Reform could win with the support of less than 10% of the electorate. A strange form of democracy! Details of the mayoral candidates’ platforms can be found here on the BBC website.
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