For the first time – and last time ever, each seat is being contested by five candidates from parties represented at Westminster.
TL/DR? Type in your postcode to https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/ and email your questions to the candidates!
The candidates’ lists have been disaggregated by district-level council areas below.
- Cambridge City Council – election notices
- East Cambridgeshire District Council – election notices
- Fenland District Council – election notices
- Huntingdonshire District Council – election notices
- South Cambridgeshire District Council – election notices
“Who can I vote for?”
The more convenient Who can I vote for? site has their Cambridgeshire elections page here with candidates listed by ward. Click on any of the ward pages and you get candidate profiles. It’s up to individual candidates and their parties to ensure that online and social media pages are up to date with their latest publications and posts.
Phil Rodgers predicts the outcomes for Cambridge’s seats
You can see his spreadsheet here – he’s been doing this for nearly a decade-and-a-half.
Above – Phil’s predictions – which I broadly concur with on seats. On the mayoralty, the intervention of TeamNigel (it’s a style guide thing) means that for me the mayoral contest is now too close to call.
“Of the 14 Reform candidates standing in Cambridge, four live in Fenland, three in East Cambs, three in Huntingdonshire, one in South Cambs, one in Peterborough, and only two in Cambridge itself.”
There’s a similar pattern in parts of Fenland with a number of South Cambridgeshire residences of candidates listed. But that’s all allowed for in electoral law and guidance. Furthermore it gives the voters a choice on paper at least, even though the state of democracy and elections in the UK (recalling a 59% turnout in last year’s general election) means that our degraded civic society infrastructure means there will be very few high profile actively-contested seats where for example there are multiple public meetings and hustings across the community, and where the majority of the electorate will have seen/heard from the candidates whether face-to-face or on video online.
The three millstones weighing down on the county council elections
The first is the restructure of local government, which means that the winning candidates will only be in post for a few years before the new structures kick in. That’s two years to do something, followed by a year in transition to the new unitary structures at the end of which will be new unitary council elections. Which is not long in post.
The Cambridge Development Corporation / Growth Company inevitably takes away more power and influence from local government – whether city or county. What do you do as a county councillor where central government and the development corporation established by it override the wishes of local residents?
The further cuts to public services announced by The Chancellor (who was in Peterborough earlier with Labour’s mayoral candidate, Cllr Anna Smith) in her recent statement. (See more from CambsNews of the Chancellor’s visit here). The highly unpopular move so close to an election was a major strategic error combined with a failure to switch the voting system back to what it was before the Tories in government changed it to First Past The Post. Both moves make it much harder for Cllr Smith to hold onto the mayoralty for Labour.
The question then is who is most likely to win the seat from Labour
There are a number of ex-Conservative candidates and activists who are standing for TeamNigel in the county council elections – which in itself reveals just how much of a challenge the Conservatives face in winning not only the mayoralty, but also defending their existing seats. Which is why I think the mayoralty is too close to call. There’s a greater incentive for angry habitual Tory-leaning voters to vote for their light-blue opponents with both mayoralty and county seats up for grabs. And remember, the previous iteration of TeamNigel in 2013 tore lumps out of the previously safe-as-military-fortresses Tory hold on the county council, 11 seats going to their purple-and-green-rosetted opponents in the north of the county.
The joint administration – credit to the councillors that managed to hold it together in the toughest of circumstances
Let’s not forget the political earthquake that hit Cambridgeshire in 2021 – the Tories lost the mayoralty that was designed to be safe-as-military fortresses, and also control of the county that they had lead since the mid-1990s.
With a few by-elections and defections between 2021-25, the balance of power
| Conservative | 21 (previously 28 following the 2021 elections) |
| Independent | 2 |
| St Neots Independent Group | 1 |
| Labour | 10 |
| Liberal Democrat | 23 (previously 20 following the 2021 elections) |
| Non-Aligned Independent | 4 |
| Total | 61 |
Above – from Cambridgeshire County Council (which will change after the elections next month)
Musical chairs as councillors stand in different divisions
The ones that might of interest to Cambridge people include:
- Lucy Nethsingha, outgoing leader of the county council and former MEP is standing down in Newnham, and is a candidate for the Liberal Democrats in the rapidly-expanding town of Cambourne (see statement of candidates in South Cambridgeshire here). In 2021, the Tories won the seat by only 186 votes. The following year at the district council elections, the Liberal Democrats won two of the three seats in the all-out elections, and in 2024 the party won the parliamentary seat. The continual population growth of Cambourne means it’s all to play for – and it’s not hard to see why in the face of a declining vote in Newnham in face of a rising Green Party vote (they won the last two city council contests in this ward), their party leader is now standing in a new seat.
- Alex Beckett, Chair of the Highways Committee standing down in Queen Edith’s (where his replacement is sitting city councillor Karen Young, who previously served in St Alban’s before moving to Cambridge) in favour of Market Division. This seat unexpectedly went to Labour in 2021 with Prof Nick Gay (restanding) winning the seat from the defending Liberal Democrats by a tiny 91 votes.
- Dr Alex Bulat, who stood in the Huntingdon seat for Labour in 2024, is standing down from Abbey Division in Cambridge having moved out of the city a few years ago. She is now standing in St Ives and Needingworth for Labour. With a resurgent The Green Party holding all three city council seats in Abbey, that seat looks likely to go Green too. Anything more than two county seats for the Greens will be dreamland for the party.
Keep an eye out for some more unsuccessful general election MP-candidates from 2024 who are standing as county candidates – in particular those who replaced longstanding incumbents
There might be time to organise local hustings for your neighbourhood – but community groups will have to move quickly!
See Chris Rand’s guide here – and let the local media know if you are running it! It’s also worth having someone recording the opening speeches of each candidate and putting them up online so voters can hear from the candidates in their own voices. (As demonstrated by this group of democratic hoodlums in Queen Edith’s back in 2023)
Remember democracy is not a spectator sport – it requires our active participation to protect and improve it.
One small way to start? Go to https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/ and email your question/s to the candidates standing in your area. Ideally the same question / set of questions to all candidates so it’s easier to compare responses. Then feel free to discuss their responses with people in your community.
Also, a shout out to those unsung democracy warriors who put themselves up for election but who never get elected. See the list for Cambridge here.
If you are interested in the longer term future of Cambridge, and on what happens at the local democracy meetings where decisions are made, feel free to:
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