‘I had a minimum of ten in my head before’, the Mayor said
Leader of Reform UK, Nigel Farage, with Mayor Luke Campbell(Image: Getty Images)
The Reform UK Mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire, Luke Campbell, has reacted to his party’s recent successes in Hull City Council’s local elections. The party, who went into last Thursday’s vote without any councillors in Hull, won ten of the 19 seats available.
The party is now the third largest on the council behind the Liberal Democrats (26 seats) and the Labour Party (16 seats). Following the election, the council has entered a state of ‘no overall control’ as the Liberal Democrats have lost their majority in the Guildhall.
Following Mr Campbell’s success at the 2025 Mayoral election, receiving the most votes in both Hull and the East Riding, many in the region expected Reform to establish a presence in Hull City Council. Ahead of the election, the party’s leader, Nigel Farage, told Hull Live he believed Reform could win “a really, really good number” of councillors in the city.
Reacting to the result, Mr Campbell said: “I had a minimum of ten in my head before”. He added: “I wish we’d have got more because what I’ve seen of the campaigns, the two local political parties, the Lib Dems and Labour, completely focussed their campaigns on slagging me off. That’s your campaign? Why don’t you campaign on what you’ve achieved?
“This time next year we’ll be campaigning on what we’ve achieved. It’s not about putting anyone else down or slagging anyone else off.”
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In May 2027, residents across the region will return to the polls. Next year all 67 seats in the East Riding are up for election while another third of Hull City Council will also be up for grabs. If the results of the Mayoral election in 2025 are replicated, Reform could become the largest party on East Riding Of Yorkshire Council.
Meanwhile, in Hull, if the party see similar results to this year in 2027, they could begin to challenge the Lib Dems as the authority’s biggest party ahead of further elections in 2028.
Mr Campbell described the potential scenario of there being Reform council leaders on the Combined Authority’s executive board in the coming years as a “game changer.” He added: “If they [the councils] were Reform run, we’d work collaboratively together.”
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