Hull and East Yorkshire mayor 2025: Candidates
The candidates who have so far been declared, listed by surname alphabetically, are:Rowan Halstead - Yorkshire PartyAnne Handley - ConservativeKerry Harrison - GreenMargaret Pinder - LabourMike Ross - Liberal DemocratsA candidate for Reform UK will be announced at the Connexin Live arena in Hull on Thursday.Under the devolution deal, Hull and East Yorkshire will be given an additional £13m a year from government.Hull City Council and East Riding of Yorkshire Council will retain their independence and continue their work as normal, alongside the combined authority.Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner previously said the changes were about "rebalancing the power between Westminster and our communities"."This agreement will ensure local people will have a seat at the table as we drive forward our plans to deliver economic growth, and unleash the potential of towns and cities which have been neglected for far too long," she said.
Listen to highlights from Hull and East Yorkshire on BBC Sounds, watch the latest episode of Look North or tell us about a story you think we should be covering here.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Only Angela Rayner has emerged from the welfare debacle with her reputation intact
It is a cliche that Labour is the party of work – 'the clue is in the name' – and yet the first time that proposition has been tested in government resulted in a humiliating retreat. Keir Starmer failed to make the case for welfare reform, which meant that it looked as if he and Rachel Reeves, his iron chancellor, just wanted to save money. Presented to Labour backbenchers as a choice between austerity and defending the rights of people with disabilities, there was only going to be one outcome – and it is a measure of the prime minister's naivety that he didn't see it until the last moment. It is significant that it was Angela Rayner, who lives and breathes politics, who led the effort behind the scenes to save the government from being defeated in the Commons. It was she who forced the prime minister to bow to the reality of parliamentary arithmetic. As reputations shake out in the aftermath of the government's double climb down, only the deputy prime minister has gained in stature. Starmer's standing in the party and the country has been damaged, so much so that some Labour MPs are talking about when Rayner might take over from him. Reeves's share price has also fallen – so much so that, when she appeared upset about what her spokesperson said was a 'personal matter' at Prime Minister's Questions today, speculation that she had resigned or was about to resign rocked the bond markets. The reputation of Liz Kendall, the work and pensions secretary, has also suffered. She managed to push more Labour MPs into the rebel camp with her defence of her bill to restrict personal independent payments (PIP) on Monday. There is talk of resets and reshuffles, but unless they deal with the cause of the government's difficulties, they will be to no avail. Some Labour MPs want Reeves to be moved out of the Treasury. Indeed, she must take some of the blame for the government's embarrassment, but moving her would be an act of weakness on Starmer's part, and besides, who could replace her who would make a better job of selling the reform message? John Healey? Wes Streeting? Rayner herself? The real reason many dissident Labour MPs want Reeves moved, however, is that they simply want to be liberated from her fiscal rules, which is like saying that they want everything to be free. No, the fundamental problem is that Starmer and Reeves started from the wrong place. They looked at the rising bill for disability benefits and thought it should be prevented from rising so fast. But instead of analysing why the system run by the Department of Work and Pensions is putting so many people on PIP, they simply decreed that less should be spent on it. Kendall and Stephen Timms, the welfare minister, both of whom know a lot about the benefits system, did not have the time to work out a reform plan and so offered crude changes to the rules to restrict eligibility instead. It might have been possible to work out that the shift from in-person interviews to telephone or video calls might lead to more awards, for example, and that part of the solution would be to go back to assessors seeing people face to face. Instead, ministers were left trying to justify taking money away from existing recipients as well as from people who might expect to receive benefits in future. That meant the government's case was weak, and it had the disastrous effect of making Corbynite MPs sound reasonable. After all Starmer's success in sidelining the impossibilist wing of the party before the election, he now allowed Nadia Whittome, Richard Burgon and Diane Abbott to find their voices and do what they do best, bashing the leadership. The real problem was the number of mainstream loyalist Labour MPs who could not stand for taking benefits away from people with disabilities, but their rebellion gave free rein to the irreconcilables and added to the impression of a party at war with itself. Starmer, who admitted that he had been 'distracted' by important business abroad, should have realised that it was a priority to get the argument right. He should have insisted on going beyond the cliche about Labour being the party of working people and looked at why the disability benefits bill is rising before devising a plan that really would get people off benefits and into work. As long as it didn't involve taking benefits away from existing claimants (apart from fraudulent ones), mainstream loyalist Labour MPs would have supported it. And the Corbynite wing would have been marginalised. Instead, Starmer has blighted the prospects of any reform. There was so little trust between Labour MPs and the government last night that even after Timms announced that the entire PIP section of the bill was being withdrawn, 49 Labour MPs still voted against it. Even good, sensible and workable proposals are going to be difficult to get through parliament now. On the other hand, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown recovered from unhappy early attempts to cut welfare spending in the first few years of the New Labour government, with Brown producing an imaginative plan for tax credits that improved work incentives. Reeves must now come up with something similar.
Daily Mail
2 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE 'Keir Starmer is pinned between sneers and tears': JUDI JAMES on an 'utterly crushed' Rachel Reeves as she sits crying next to the PM and a 'scathing-looking' Angela Rayner
Sir Keir Starmer was 'pinned between sneers and tears' with an 'utterly crushed' Rachel Reeves on one side and a 'scathing-looking' Angela Rayner on the other, a body language expert said today. Judi James added that the Chancellor gave a series of red flags that she was feeling emotional before she began crying in the House of Commons this afternoon. Ms Reeves was visibly tearful as her position came under intense scrutiny after the welfare U-turn which put a near-£5 billion black hole in her plans. But allies said she was dealing with a 'personal matter' while No 10 said she had Sir Keir's 'full backing' despite him failing to publicly support her in the Commons. Ms James has analysed frame-by-frame video of the moment Ms Reeves began crying and told MailOnline: 'Starmer looks pinned between sneers and tears here. 'Sneers from Rayner, who sits upright and almost impassive, performing a rather scathing-looking sideways glance with heavy-lidded eyes, making occasional nods of support for Starmer's points but seeming to keep herself aloof and slightly distant. 'Then poor Reeves's tears, which do seem to roll openly down her cheeks, with just some head-tossing or twitching to maybe try to blow or knock them away.' She added that Ms Reeves is 'normally as robotically rigid as her boss' and 'tends to sit through PMQs looking primly dressed as she supports Starmer with some mocking smiles and nods'. But Ms James said of the Chancellor today: 'Here though it's the angle of her torso that is the first red flag in terms of emotions. She sits slumped forward at an ungainly angle with her blouse slightly askew. Her shoulders are hunched and her head pulled into her neck. 'When she tries to smile it is just a pinching of her lips and her eyes perform a staccato, twitchy blink suggesting inner distress or anxiety. 'In close up her eyes appear reddened and damp and there are some screen grabs that seem to suggest a tear or tears are actually running down her cheeks. If this is authentic it would suggest genuine, uncontrolled upset.' Sir Keir had faced questions over his handling of a welfare reform package which has been stripped of key elements to limit the scale of a Labour revolt. Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said Ms Reeves looked 'absolutely miserable' and challenged the Prime Minister to say whether she would keep her job until the next election. Sir Keir dodged the question about whether Ms Reeves would be in place for the remainder of the Parliament, saying Mrs Badenoch 'certainly won't'. But Ms James added that even Ms Badenoch's delivery suggests 'she might have pulled back a little here'. She continued: 'When she says Reeves looks 'absolutely miserable' and repeats it, her voice seems to drop a little in tone as though she's lacking the suitable sense of bloodlust to stick the verbal knife right in. 'Reeves looks too vulnerable and if this is a personal problem she should obviously be prompting sympathy.' Ms James also made the comparison to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher shedding a tear in an interview with ITN in 1991 about her final days at Downing Street. She said: 'This is not a first when it comes to political tears. Margaret Thatcher famously cried in a TV interview after being nudged out of office. 'But her tear, because it was just one tear, was quickly dabbed away to in another display of her iron control. Her back remained upright and she looked as fierce as ever. 'In contrast Rachel Reeves, who has channelled the Iron Lady in the past, looks utterly crushed here. ' Ms James said another close-up of Ms Reeves showed 'another symptom of tears when her chin seems to crumple, and she appears to struggle to keep a straight facial expression'. She added: 'From the side view we can also see how far in Starmer's direction her torso has slumped as she leans at an acute angle, making her look exhausted.' Turning her attention to Sir Keir, Ms James said his display was 'all about a show of resilience and bravado though'. She continued: 'He sits next to his chancellor bouncing in his seat and chuckling with a sickly mouth smile and eye crinkling as she is called 'miserable' in a display of jollity although his eyes are pinned away from Reeves when one glance in her direction might warn him that he has little to chuckle about and much to be concerned about, even on a human level if she is in such distress.' Just before the start of PMQs, video footage caught another MP appearing to put his hand on Ms Reeves's shoulder to check she was alright. And Ms James said: 'It's actually warming to see Reeves getting a checking signal of concern and caring here even before PMQs start, albeit not from her boss but from someone on the benches behind her. 'It could tie-in with the idea that her distress and her tears were caused by a personal matter as this MP quite openly leans forward to place a hand on her shoulder to check she is OK, which might suggest they are aware she has a private problem that she is determined to work through. 'We can see her try to reassure him but as she turns there are those uncontrollable movement of the mouth and chin that tend to be a symptom of the real struggle she might be having to suppress her emotions.' Changes to restrict eligibility for the personal independence payment (Pip) were abandoned yesterday just 90 minutes before MPs voted on them, wiping out the savings that Ms Reeves had counted on to help meet her goal of funding day-to-day spending through tax receipts rather than borrowing. Mrs Badenoch said: 'Today the Prime Minister refused to back his Chancellor, leaving her humiliated. 'She is the human shield for his expensive U-turns. How can anyone be a chancellor for a man who doesn't know what he believes and who changes his mind every other minute?' As the Chancellor left the Commons after Prime Minister's Questions her sister, Ellie Reeves, took her hand in an apparent show of support. Asked about her tears, a spokesman for the Chancellor said: 'It's a personal matter which, as you would expect, we are not going to get into. 'The Chancellor will be working out of Downing Street this afternoon.' Reports suggested Ms Reeves had been involved in an altercation with Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle shortly before Prime Minister's Questions. A spokeswoman for the Speaker said: 'No comment.' A comparison has been made to former prime minister Margaret Thatcher shedding a tear in an interview with ITN in 1991 about her final days at Downing Street Asked why Sir Keir did not confirm in the Commons that he still had faith in Ms Reeves, the Prime Minister's press secretary told reporters: 'He has done so repeatedly. 'The Chancellor is going nowhere. She has the Prime Minister's full backing. 'He has said it plenty of times, he doesn't need to repeat it every time the Leader of the Opposition speculates about Labour politicians.' Asked whether the Prime Minister still had confidence in Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall, the press secretary said: 'Yes.' Labour has promised that income tax, employee national insurance contributions and VAT will not be increased, restricting Ms Reeves' options for raising money if she does look to hike taxes. Sir Keir has declined to rule out tax rises later this year, telling MPs: 'No prime minister or chancellor ever stands at the despatch box and writes budgets in the future.'
The Independent
3 hours ago
- The Independent
Rayner dismisses suggestions she could take Starmer's place
Angela Rayner, the deputy prime minister, says she would never want to be prime minister, joking that it would age her by 10 years within six months. She dismissed suggestions of replacing Sir Keir Starmer, despite a recent rebellion over his welfare reforms and growing criticism of his leadership. Ms Rayner defended Sir Keir, asserting he is doing the job for Britain by repairing international relationships and securing trade deals. Her comments follow polling expert Professor Sir John Curtice 's assessment that Sir Keir's first year in office has been the worst start for any newly elected prime minister. Ms Rayner expressed passion for issues like workers' rights and council housing, emphasising her commitment to serving the country in her current role.
