‘I’m voting tactically in the mayoral election – here’s why’
TIME TO DECIDE: The cover of the election brochure
By Phil Ascough
Could tactical voting help to decide the outcome of this week’s mayoral election in Hull and East Yorkshire?
At least one influential website thinks it can, and it’s urging people who want to stop Reform UK’s Luke Campbell to get behind the candidate considered best placed to beat him.
Around here that’s Mike Ross, the Liberal Democrat candidate who is also leader of Hull City Council.
Billed as “A Tool for Smart Voters”, the StopTheTories.Vote website has broadened its scope to also urge people to reject Reform in the elections taking place across the country on Thursday.
Their message is simple: vote tactically on May 1st “because keeping Reform out now will be easier than getting Reform out later”.
But it’s not quite as easy as ABC – Anybody But Campbell. The website specifically promotes Ross as the safer alternative to avoid splitting the anti-Reform vote between the parties once considered to be the big three.
The latest poll by YouGov has Reform taking 35 per cent of the vote in Hull and East Yorkshire with the Lib Dems on 21 per cent, Labour on 20 per cent and the Tories on 15 per cent. The Green Party and the Yorkshire Party are even further off the pace.
A friend of mine, who is a political activist and lifelong socialist, even suggested that Margaret Pinder, the Labour and Co-operative candidate, should withdraw and urge her supporters to lend their votes to Ross.
Now that might be in part because my mate is a former Labour member who resigned in protest some time ago at the party’s swing to the right, but it’s also recognition that Labour voters are more likely to want to stop Reform.
Tories, on the other hand, have shown more of a tendency to leap even further to the right, and it’s entirely possible that some people who would normally vote for Anne Handley, the Conservative candidate and leader of East Riding Council, have already pledged their support to Campbell, however temporarily.
There’s no doubt that the scenario has largely come about because of the failings of those major parties.
A contact of mine who has spent her working life supporting communities in Hull and East Yorkshire says the people most likely to want “change” as proposed by Reform are marginalised, disconnected, unengaged and ignored and have been for generations in some cases.
She sees solutions in community energy, and in particular a strong method of re-empowering people in their own areas and bringing more sustainability. But she recognises that we’ve left it very late.
It may be the company I keep but I haven’t found anybody in the business community who sees a Reform mayor as beneficial to our region.
Campbell has shown himself to be incapable of contributing to a serious discussion about the issues facing the region and the opportunities presented by guaranteed government funding of £14m a year, with the potential to generate much larger investment.
Writing in the Yorkshire Post Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, noted Reform’s plans to scrap net zero, impose taxes on renewables and roll back investment in clean energy infrastructure – all essential to our region’s economic wellbeing.
Murison added that whoever wins the election must engage seriously with business. That starts with taking a spirit of collaboration to the new authority’s cabinet, where other members will include the leaders of the two local councils – so Campbell’s rivals on the ballot sheet – plus their deputies. A majority will be required for any proposed decision, so in theory a Campbell win would put him in office but not necessarily in power.
In the same newspaper, Campbell suggested that the regeneration of Queens Gardens is “doing nothing to the economy”. It’s not cheap, and it’s late, but it is still an essential part of the investment in the continuing improvement of the city region, and in attracting visitors as part of the Hull Maritime project.
When he was asked by the BBC what the cost would be of Reform’s nationalisation plans, Campbell could only reply: “Quite a lot.”
In a personal statement of about 250 words published in the Holderness Gazette, Campbell made 12 references to Hull or “this city” and none to East Yorkshire. It suggested he doesn’t know – or doesn’t care – that the mayoral role also covers the wider territory. His assertion that “Labour has held Hull for years” shows how out of touch he is. The Lib Dems still have the overall control that they won in 2022.
But Campbell’s inadequacies don’t seem to be cutting through to the public, who either don’t know or don’t care about the issues at stake, and who can’t grasp that this election is different. It won’t shift the balance of power in the Guildhall, County Hall or Westminster, but it will give us a springboard for significant growth.
It’s not always easy to trust the polls, but they’d have to be massively wide of the mark for the new mayor to be anybody but Campbell, with the popular vote once again swallowing Reform’s promise of change without actually saying what that would mean.
The best case scenario would be that the combined authority cabinet would be able to resist Reform’s most damaging policies – whatever they may turn out to be. But we could still be condemned to four years of stagnation and stalled investment, with all its impact on jobs, growth and the public services they support.
We can’t leave it to the candidates, because nobody is going to step aside this close to polling day. So please take part in the mayoral election, take a stand against policies of division and isolationism, and take the advice about tactical voting.
And don’t forget your photo ID.
The candidates standing in the election are: Luke Campbell (Reform UK); Rowan Halstead (Yorkshire Party); Anne Handley (Conservative Party); Kerry Harrison (Green Party); Margaret Pinder (Labour and Co-operative); Mike Ross (Liberal Democrat).