A very West Yorkshire election
Metro mayors are changing the way we do politics – and that’s a good thing for democracy, for local economies and for the future of the UK.
As the date for West Yorkshire’s second mayoral election draws ever nearer, it’s worth looking back briefly to the last and first time it was held. It was May 2021 and England was still in a state of lockdown. It was the third time we had been instructed to stay at home. The first was in March 2020, when the World Health Organization (WHO) had officially declared the Covid-19 outbreak a pandemic. The second was announced at the end of October. It would be just four weeks long. Although we didn’t know it at the time, the third lockdown would be the last and two months on from Tracy Brabin’s historic win – the first woman to be elected a metro mayor in England – most legal restrictions in the country were lifted. The worst of it was over. When it came to casting ballots in that election, which, was taken place alongside local elections that had been postponed by a year, it wasn’t business as usual. Voters were required to wear masks and socially distance. Government guidance encouraged people to bring their own pens or pencils and windows and doors in polling stations were left wide open. Hand sanitiser was abundant and anyone showing symptoms of Covid-19 were told to test, self-isolate and apply for an emergency proxy vote, which they could do up until 5pm on the day of the election.
Three years later, the world is a very different place. We’re coming up to 12 “official” months of living in a post-pandemic era (WHO declared that Covid-19 was no longer a global health emergency last May) and this year’s local and mayoral elections will feel like a more straightforward and familiar affair: turn up, vote and be on your merry way. Yet, this set of local and mayoral elections will be some of the most consequential they have been in a long time. The country is continuing to live through a cost of living crisis, the national economy is a “decade and a half into a period of stagnation” and public services are trapped in a “doom loop”. How people vote on Thursday 2 May will, rightly or wrongly, be seen as a bellwether for the general election later this year and the future direction of the UK.
That’s not to say the 2024 local and mayoral elections aren’t important in their own right. They absolutely are. When voters head to the polls this spring, local issues will be front and centre in their minds. Indeed, as the Centre for Cities observed recently, when it comes to mayoral elections people are “more likely to vote based upon local issues than they are in normal local elections”. There’s a tacit understanding that mayors, especially since devolution in England symbolically kicked up a gear in 2017 – when six metro mayors were elected for the first time – have, to a varying degree, a lot more power and money to deliver change locally. Accordingly, incumbent mayors are, in part, judged on their record in office, while new candidates are weighed up according to their locally-driven manifestos, as well as their personal and professional history with the region they’re looking to be in charge of.
Each candidate standing to be mayor in the 10 metro mayoral elections being contested this May – which will collectively cover 34% of England’s population once the proverbial dust has settled – is well aware of this. Cue, in West Yorkshire, “Just imagine what we can achieve with another four years” (Tracy, Labour), “I support and will campaign for stronger local powers, for fairer funding and to reverse the cuts and cancellations from Westminster” (Bob Buxton, The Yorkshire Party), “People across West Yorkshire must have more say in local policing priorities” (Andrew Cooper, Green Party), “I am standing because I have lived in West Yorkshire all my life and I believe that my business experience means I can deliver for you” (Arnold Craven, Conservatives), “I have 25 years’ experience standing up for residents in the council chamber (Stewart Golton, Liberal Democrats), and “I will protect our vital rural economy against attempts to reduce food production” (Jonathan Tilt, independent).
While the backdrop to this year’s mayoral election in West Yorkshire is markedly different to that of 2021, they’re similar in many respects. Many of the he same issues are again being debated and four of the six candidates standing to mayor in May also stood three years ago. There’s Tracy, of course, the incumbent; Bob, who finished a surprise third; Andrew, who finished fourth; and Stewart, who finished fifth. All are of the opinion that they’re in a far better position to win this time around (and again in the case of Tracy).
“We’re more established,” says Bob, who, seemingly against all odds, secured close to 59,000 votes in 2021. “Some people may have felt it was just a protest vote last time, thinking that we’d finish fifth or sixth. But we didn’t. We ended up third. We’re now [the Yorkshire Party] the first alternative to the big two.”
Andrew, meanwhile, sees an increase in support for the Green Party since the last mayoral election – particularly from people who have never voted for the Greens before in West Yorkshire – as being more of a deciding factor in 2024. “I've also been getting support from people who would normally vote for Labour, but have decided for this election, to not to do that. So that’s certainly going to be of assistance.”
For Stewart, it’s the public perception of instability and chaos within the Conservative party, 14 years deep at a national level – and, to some extent, even Labour – that has the potential to give him and the Liberal Democrats a bump in West Yorkshire at the start of May. “Given the experience that they've had in terms of the rollercoaster of three Conservative prime ministers and the shock of Corbyn versus Starmer in the Labour Party, they [voters] might actually appreciate the stability and consistency that the Liberal Democrats offer.”
The noticeable absence this time around is Reform UK, whose candidate, Wajid Ali – who has, it seems, switched his allegiance to the Conservatives (he’s now president of Wakefield and Rothwell Conservative Association) – picked up nearly 15,000 votes in 2021. The English Democrats, a nationalist party that was founded in 2002, which had the backing of 8,969 voters in West Yorkshire three years ago, has also decided not to field a candidate. Thérèse Hirst, who stood last time, tells me she’s not well at the moment and “couldn’t give it the full attention it deserves”. The two new faces for 2024 are Arnold, “a businessman who gets things done”, who is representing the Conservatives, and Jonathan, an independent whose strapline is “NOT 4 SALE”.
“I was always interested in politics,” Jonathan tells me. “But I've never participated in it. It was a desperate time in 2020. I thought we've got to do whatever we can to try and get in the way of this [state overreach]. So, we were looking at local elections – that was something we could use to disrupt this.” That same thinking, of using politics to fight back against the corrupt establishment, he explains, is also the central theme of his campaign to be West Yorkshire mayor.
“Being mayor would give me the scope to prevent the implementation of lockdown measures in West Yorkshire, things like mask mandates and business closures. While we can’t stop the declaration of a lockdown by central government, we can, with the police and crime commissioner powers, have in place a good policing crime plan that prevents the police from implementing it.”
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The road to devolution in England has been slow, protracted, messy and uneven. While you can trace its history back even further in time to the early twentieth century, in comparatively more recent times, it goes as far as the final years of the 1990s when the Labour government started to slowly hand over powers to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland respectively. This was followed by the creation of the London Assembly and the London mayor in 2000. And then, for a long time, nothing of real consequence – the government didn’t know what to do. Following the failed 2004 north east regional assembly referendum, which was resolutely rejected by 77.9% of voters – English devolution was, to all intents, left in the doldrums. It would be another five years before any real change would occur with the passing of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. This has made it possible for combined authorities – made up of a number of local authorities in a specific area – to be established with our without a mayor (although the trend is very much for the former). And they would have more powers and more funding at their disposal. The seed for the so-called devolution revolution in England had been planted. Five years later, a combined authority in West Yorkshire was established, the same year that Greater Manchester became the first to sign a devolution deal. Six years later, in 2020, West Yorkshire signed its own deal. Twelve months later, it elected its first mayor.
It's been a long journey getting to this point, but here’s the thing – devolution hasn’t been as radical as it ought to have been, the candidates I spoke to tell me (we didn’t get to speak to Tracy, who couldn’t commit to an interview before the election, and Arnold, who didn’t respond to our requests). The levelling up project needs to go much further and much faster. “We're a very centralised country – so we devolve in a centralised way,” explains Andrew. “You’re also devolving power from a remote Westminster to a single individual in a region – so it's a very limited form of devolution.” One of the ways he would look to change that as mayor would be to introduce an annual conference, where all councillors in the region – not just leaders, not just cabinets – would be invited to approve his business plan, “so that it’s got the backing of every elected representative in the area”.
Stewart sees it less as true devolution and more as delegation. “They [the government] give you a pot of money and they say, ‘Oh, look, aren't we generous, we've given you £800 million quid.’ But they also say, here are the rules on how you're allowed to spend it – those rules are still being written by people in Whitehall. So your power [as mayor] to do things differently is limited in too many areas.”
If the Yorkshire Party has its way and finds itself in charge of the West Yorkshire Combined Authority from next month, it’ll look to challenge this top-down approach – if it even has to do that. “We know that if we won the mayoral election just months before the general election, it would genuinely scare Westminster into giving Yorkshire far more than it currently does,” says Bob. “If they – Labour and the Conservatives – see hundreds of thousands of votes going to me, they’ll rewrite their manifestos.”
What the candidates are effectively advocating for is meaningful devolution, with the kind of power and funding that moves the country away from a prohibitive and paternalistic approach to local government. Because metro mayoral expansion or not, it remains the case that to this day that England has, as the Guardian recently put it, “one of the most centralised polities in Europe [presiding] over some of the highest regional disparities”. The challenge, the candidates tell me in their own way, is that so long as the two-party system continues to dominate politics, nationally and locally, the full potential of English regions outside of London is unlikely to be properly realised.
“It’s healthy for democracy to have proper challenges in the system,” says Andrew. “If you have a Labour mayor with five Labour leaders, how democratic is that going to be?” Stewart agrees. “If you have Labour-run local authorities, and if you have a labour-run government, and then you have a Labour mayor, then effectively in West Yorkshire you’ve got a one party state. And that's very dangerous. Because what tends to happen is when politicians are all from the same party, they stick up for each other and they make excuses for their colleagues at different levels of government. If we're going to get our fair deal, we need to make sure that we’re not afraid to challenge those above– who could enable us to have more powers – and those below who we rely on to deliver a lot of the benefits that we want.”
Bob sees it as a numbers game, with national aspirations superseding the real needs of local people. “What do Labour and Tories want more than anything else?” he asks. “They want to win. If you want stronger regional powers with fairer funding, then it's the Yorkshire Party that you need to vote for.”
For Jonathan, whose views, in stark contrast to the Green Party, Yorkshire Party and Liberal Democrat candidates I spoke to, very much lean towards the unorthodox and conspiratorial – though, as he tells me, that’s a matter of perspective, as from his point of view he’s “not a conspiracy theorist” – it also goes a lot deeper. “We have a corporate economy where corporations conspire with the state to run everything and to make sure that the taxation system is biased towards them,” he explains. “I believe that the powerful people that control our economy and politics conspire together to make sure that they remain in control.”
Accordingly, a vote for Jonathan, Andrew, Bob or Stewart, more so than Tracy and Arnold – both of whom, it’s worth saying, have strong local ties – is, so their argument goes, a vote for local politics delivered by local politicians focused on local issues. “There's a lot of freedom with being a Green councillor,” says Andrew. “Which, when you look at other parties … it’s awful. People have gone to the trouble of electing you and you can’t say certain things because you’re not allowed to. I think that's one of the reasons why, when we get elected, we're more likely to stay elected – because we're better able to represent the community that put their cross in the ballot paper for us.”
It's certainly the case for Stewart, who has, despite his many years in local politics, never been part of the Westminster bubble. “I come at it [being mayor] from the perspective of being at the very local level,” he says. “You get other candidates that have come from the other end, from being MPs. They come at it from a perspective of what a politician does – which is you write a load of policies that you hope will be popular and you release a lot of press releases. Because that's what national parties do in government. And that's what oppositions do in government. For me, it's all about delivery. I think that's one of the differences that people can perceive between 26 years of experience on the front line of delivering services as a councillor, and however many years someone else has spent in the Houses of Parliament in central London.”
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Before she was elected mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy was the MP for Batley and Spen (and, of course, before that, an actor seemingly best remembered for her time on Coronation Street). She was elected in 2016, following the murder of Jo Cox, whose younger sister, Kim Leadbetter, now represents the constituency. Tracy spent most of her time as a quintessential backbench MP, quietly plugging away, with a brief stint in the shadow cabinet under Jeremy Corbyn. From a quick Google, it’s not 100% clear why she didn’t want to continue representing the Batley and Spen constituency, but it’s perhaps part of a sea change that is happening in British politics (well, at least English politics). There’s something in the idea that MPs today, when presented with an opportunity to be mayor of a combined authority, especially those MPs who happen to be in opposition (or impending opposition), a role with significant and growing powers irrespective of what political party is the government of the day, are going to seize it without hesitation. Consider Andy Burnham, who two years before being elected mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017, was standing to be Labour leader, a context he lost to Jeremy. Today, however, he’s arguably one of the most influential figures in British politics, in charge of one of the biggest combined authorities in England and at the forefront of English devolution. Had Andy stayed an MP, it would arguably have amounted to more powerless years in opposition (and he may well have lost his seat). That’s not to say this is pure and outright opportunism. Andy, for example, had previously said that “Labour is too London-centric” and that “Westminster has become a bit of an irrelevance for some people and we really need to change the way politics works”. Tracy, likewise, in a 2020 column for the Yorkshire Post, wrote: “I see devolution and the election of a West Yorkshire Mayor as our chance to reach for the stars again.” It’s a mayor and not an MP that is seen as the instrument of change locally.
Tracy and her team have gone into the campaign for mayoral re-election in buoyant mood. There are two main reasons for this. One, whatever your politics, the Conservative brand is badly damaged and this has, so far, both nationally and locally, played largely into her party’s hands, as demonstrated by the 2023 local election results, which saw Labour become the largest party of local government for the first time since 2002. The increase in support for Labour, says Andrew, whose Green Party along with thr Liberal Democrats also made notable gains a year ago, isn’t so clearcut. Voters, he says, are acquiescent. “Somebody suggested that the Labour Party change its name to ‘Labour, I Suppose’ to reflect what most people say when asked who they’re going to vote for. But I want people to be enthusiastic about change. I want them to feel that their vote really does make a real difference.” Two, she claims to have delivered all 10 of her manifesto pledges, from recruiting 750 more frontline police officers and staff and bringing buses back under public control to building 5,000 sustainable homes and creating 1,000 well paid jobs for young people. However, as the other candidates tell me, those successes have to be taken with a pinch of salt.
“Tracy claims she's met her target of 750 new police officers, with 896 new officers and staff – she hasn’t,” says Bob. “People have left the force, they've retired. And yet she’s boasting that she’s well over the target. She isn’t.” Additionally, according to a recent report by the centre right think tank Onward, West Yorkshire has experienced some of the largest reductions in neighbourhood policing numbers in England (a 76% reduction between 2012 and 2023). “Crime is getting worse,” Bob adds. “She's not prioritising the right things with the police. Morale within the police is very low.”
As for bringing buses back under public control in West Yorkshire – the region, according to a recent report by Transport Focus, has the least satisfied bus passengers in England – the time it has taken for an announcement confirming that the green light for this has been given, which was made this year on the 14 March, has been unnecessarily long, Stewart tells me. “One of the frustrations that I've had with the current mayor is whenever something difficult comes along, like buses, she says, ‘Well, I don't have power to do that yet. I need to have franchising powers because that's how I take back control of the buses.’ While franchising is probably the best way forward, you promised it in 2021 – people expected you to get it implemented as soon as possible. The process, set by government, which slows the pace of change, shouldn't stop you asking for it to be speeded up.” It won’t be until at least March 2027 that franchised buses will actually be on the roads.
“She’s achieved over 3,000 new homes, but that’s not the problem,” says Andrew. “She said she was going to build 5,000 sustainable homes [4,000 have reportedly also been started] but when I asked her what her definition of a green home was, she answered ‘I don’t know’. The reason I asked the question is because if you’re going to build green homes you have to be building to a very high energy standard. A week or two later I got a response from one of her staff who said that the standard for the homes was the energy performance certificate level C. Now, this is what you get for any house built to current building regulations. So there was nothing special that was done by building these homes and no mayoral standard that was any better than a normal standard.”
And what about the pledge to create 1,000 well paid, skilled jobs for young people – has she really hit this target? Tracy, of course, thinks so. She says that the Green Jobs Taskforce has helped the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, under her leadership, “surpass” that commitment. While that’s certainly the means through which jobs will be created, it doesn’t necessarily mean 1,000 jobs have, in the three years of her mayorship, actually come to fruition. “She reckons she delivered all these new green jobs,” says Stewart. “What the Green Jobs Gateway has done is to ask employers to tell her when they've created new jobs, especially if they’re in something that’s vaguely green. And then she announces them. There is no direct correlation between the jobs that are being announced by the Green Jobs Gateway and any kind of intervention by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority.”
Jonathan’s assessment of Tracy is broader. “I don't think she's been a particularly effective voice,” he says. “She's a product of the party system. If you’re a party candidate and there's something that's clearly in the interest of the people of West Yorkshire or something that's clearly in the interest of your party, you’ll go down the party route. Otherwise, what happened to the guy in the northeast, Jamie Driscoll, will happen to you. He’s batted for the northeast and now he’s no longer the labour nominated candidate.”
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Whoever ends up as the mayor of West Yorkshire this May, whether it’s Andrew, a longstanding local councillor (he’s represented the Newsome ward in Kirklees since 1999), Bob, a teacher, engineer and former Rawdon parish councillor, Jonathan, an acupuncturist, libertarian and former accountant, Stewart, leader of the Liberal Democrats on Leeds City Council and another local stalwart (26 years and counting as a councillor), Tracy, the actress turned MP turned mayor, or Arnold, who has worked in property and infrastructure and heads up current affairs (east) at Cadent Gas Limited, has their work cut out for them.
For example, written evidence submitted by the West Yorkshire Combined Authority in November 2022 outlined some of the ongoing challenges that the region faces. Productivity has persistently been below the UK average. Fuel poverty, defined by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition as “the condition by which a household is unable to afford to heat (or cool) their home to an adequate temperature”, is also above the national average, affecting close to 30% of households in West Yorkshire. A fifth of jobs in the region pay below the real living wage, which is, explains the Living Wage Foundation, based on the actual cost of living (currently that would be £12 an hour versus the £11.44 national living wage). Further, as outlined in the 2023/24 State of the Region report from the West Yorkshire Combined Authority, gross disposable income is only 80% of the national average, the number of people attaining a higher level qualification – level four and above – is substantially lower than the national average and male and female life expectancy at birth in West Yorkshire is “significantly” lower than the average in England. Elsewhere, and according to analysis from the Institute for Government, the region has a “lower proportion of houses that reach the decent homes standard than England as a whole” (60% versus 77%), while the picture for the wider Yorkshire region, Yorkshire and the Humber, is just as bad, with recent data analysis by the People’s Health Trust finding that it has the worse housing conditions in England, with close to 40% of privately rented homes failing to meet decent home standards (close to double the average for England). These are profound and deeply rooted problems.
Whether or not you agree with Tracy’s definition of delivering on her 10 pledges, her team will still point to the progress that’s been made under watch, which would not have been possible before the devolution deal with West Yorkshire was agreed in 2020. It’s why all of the candidates are ultimately seeking to take up the role of mayor. It’s one that has influence – the kind that is set to grow and grow and grow. “Metro mayors are the best-placed local decision makers to shape the local economy and unblock barriers to growth,” says Paul Swinney, director of research and policy at Centre for Cities. “From next year, ‘trailblazer’ mayoral combined authorities will have access to a single settlement from central government, allowing them to budget far more flexibly. This means allocating funding and making decisions in a way that reflects the needs of the local economy instead of waiting for a decision from Westminster. It could mean decisions that affect local employment or infrastructure decisions aren’t delayed until a minister in Whitehall becomes available.”
It's not just about the centre ceding powers though, as Bob tells me. It’s also about regions standing up for themselves and demanding what they deserve. “When the Yorkshire Party wins, Yorkshire wins. Victory for us will scare Westminster into giving us fairer political powers and our fair share of funding. We’re the only party that will do that. Vote for the Yorkshire Party and stand up for Yorkshire.”
Andrew echoes that sentiment. “What I’ve been wanting to get across to voters is that their vote will be meaningful,” he tells me. “There’s too much emphasis on looking like you're doing something, as opposed to actually making real change, which the role gives you the opportunity to do. And I’ve got a record of delivering change.”
“One of the key things about the Liberal Democrats is that we believe that decisions should be taken as close to the communities that are affected by them as possible,” says Stewart. “Devolution is really big for us – there’s far too much control at the centre by politicians and civil servants in Whitehall, where policy very much predicated on a Westminster perspective and the experience that people have in the London environment. We at a local level need to be able to decide how our services are delivered and how our money is spent.”
All of the candidates I spoke to, all of whom I found to be pleasant, forthcoming and generous with their time, weren’t short of big, unconventional and practical ideas, too. Jonathan, for instance, talked about improving cross-border travel, explaining that the idea that everyone’s lives fit into “these neat administrative boundaries” misses the complexity of the way we live and work. Andrew talked about being more ambitious with the energy efficiency standards of new house builds and promoting a nonpartisan agenda where any good ideas regardless of the political source would be welcomed. Stewart talked about providing people with real time bus information, where the next bus on the screen wasn’t the one scheduled at the time, it was the one that was actually coming at that time. And Bob talked about using his engineering expertise to develop a world class metro system with elevated and underground sections that would free up congestion in a smarter, less disruptive way.
There is growing consensus that real, deep and transformative change at a regional level can only happen outside of Westminster – and only through the leadership of an individual that has a stronger connection to an area than most of the MPs who represent the various constituencies that fall within the boundaries of a combined authority. And that figure is unquestionably the metro mayor, which the Guardian has described collectively as “potential game changers” and the Financial Times has lauded as being a “rare success story in Britain’s otherwise lacklustre and inconsistent approach to regional growth”. Showing up to vote this May for the mayor of West Yorkshire – and for local councillors, in fact – has a lot more riding on it than you might think. You’re playing a big role in helping determine the foreseeable direction of the region – and, general election notwithstanding, the future of what has been a dysfunctional, stuttering and stagnating national economy.