The official declaration surprised no one. Some four hours earlier, Labour had called the result.
So confident were they that Claire Ward had won. Conservative Ben Bradley played an important role in negotiating the powers the new mayor will have and showed his emotion at falling short.
He said: ‘And the final thing I just want to say is a massive thank you to my wife and my kids through what has been one of the busiest times really, probably of my life.
• East Midlands Mayor: Who is Claire Ward?
‘Disappointed, obviously, on a personal level. You know, it’s a difficult national picture and I think locally we as a team have done everything we could possibly do.
‘We’ve spent months and months grafting to get out and reach people and put across a really positive message. I think, ultimately, sometimes you can’t stop the tide. In that sense, we have left everything on the field, and I’m proud of the effort that we’ve put in.’
While this was always likely to be a two-horse race, the smaller parties also played their part.
• Claire Ward gets 181,000 votes in massive East Midlands mayoral election victory
It was an impressive result for the Green Party candidate, Frank Adlington Stringer, who at the age of just 26 finished third.
He said: “People have come out in their thousands; over 50,000 people asking for better. And I’ll be holding the Labour mayor to account on behalf of every single voter who’s cast their vote in favor of my green industrial revolution, the plan I set out from the beginning and making sure that we do get the progressive policies we so desperately need here.”
• BREAKING: Claire Ward wins for Labour and becomes the first East Midlands Mayor
The new mayor will represent more than two million people and get her hands on government funding to spend on areas such as transport, housing, and further education. But the turnout in this election was just 27.6%. So almost three-quarters of people who could have voted across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire didn’t.
A sign perhaps that people are yet to be convinced of the merits of the East Midlands mayor. So now the real work begins for Claire Ward and I caught up with her straight after the result.
Claire Ward said: “Well, I’m just incredibly honored and humbled really to have this amazing result. I think it’s been an absolutely fantastic declaration of support, not just for me but for the Labour party. And it’s going to be a great four years of making sure that we really put this region on the map.”
