A staggering 732 Tory councillors are in what is expected to be a challenging set of local elections for the Conservatives. But amid the anticipated defeats at the ballot box, one battle deep in East Anglia could provide a surprising bright spark for under-pressure leader Kemi Badenoch.

Despite last year's , a bombshell opinion poll has predicted the Conservatives will snatch back the Cambridgeshire mayoralty in a surprise Tory gain from Labour. A Labour Together survey in March put former Peterborough MP and Tory candidate Paul Bristow ahead on 31% to Labour's 27%, with the Liberal Democrats and on 20% and 13% respectively. The path to victory is far from clear. A small shift in the Reform or Lib Dem vote could take votes off either the Tories or and drastically alter the final result.

But a Bristow win in Cambridgeshire could be the highlight of an and give the Tories hope that all is not lost.

When I met Bristow on a sunny day in Peterborough (I asked to interview his opponents but only heard back Reform), he was in a fighting mood and not prepared to take his defeat by just 118 votes last year lying down - even if he was brutally honest about his party's failings.

"This was the for the Conservative Party," he said of last year's national poll. "We've got to start from that premise.

"We were too busy internally squabbling and talking to ourselves. That's what we've got to get right - and you get that right by knocking on doors, talking to people and asking them questions about what will it take to regain the support of those who've traditionally voted Conservative.

"That's what I'm doing on the doorstep each and every day."

A quick look at Bristow's X feed certainly gives the impression he is busy pressing the flesh in a bid to beat Labour's Anna Smith, the Liberal Democrats' Lorna Dupre and Reform's Ryan Coogan.

The day after I saw him in Peterborough, he visited a potato factory in Thriplow, South Cambridgeshire, before dashing back north to pound the streets of Dogsthorpe, Peterborough.

Many of his ex-colleagues in the House of Commons left politics entirely after July. Yet Bristow immediately jumped back into the fray to campaign for what he rightly points out would be a much bigger job than being an MP.

Whoever wins will oversee a county of contrasts with a population of nearly a million. Beside the wealthy rural villages of South Cambridgeshire and the tech corridor of Cambridge are areas of deprivation in places like Wisbech.

Bristow joked that one of his major campaign pledges to bring light rail to means nothing to the northern, rural parts of the county. "I might as well be calling for light rail on the moon," he quipped.

"Why have I decided to come back into it? I felt four and a half years was not enough for the things I wanted to do.

"I want to show now what a mayor who's going to focus on a handful of small things that have a demonstrable impact on people's lives and do them very well can achieve."

With dire , campaigning as a Conservative right now is tough.

Bristow's Reform opponent believes he has a shot at victory. "People are desperate for change," said Coogan.

"People on the doorstep are absolutely in a state of panic about what the councils are pushing through.

"Politicians have eroded trust over time with just consistent messages where they're reading a brief in the morning and then doing absolutely nothing about it."

But Bristow said: "The first thing you've got to do is appear that you're up for it. Don't blame the electorate for voting in the way they did last time, but understand.

"Once you understand, once you show contrition, and once you show you're up for it and show how the Conservative Party has changed, then you deserve to be heard again.

"That's what I think the party need to do at Westminster but it also starts in places like Cambridge and Peterborough.

"If I can show what Conservatives can deliver in terms of politics in a geographical area, then it's the building block for us to come back."

Talk to even just a few people in and it's clear what they want from their mayor.

I trained as a young journalist in the city 20 years ago. Since I left, the Queensgate Shopping Centre has lost its John Lewis and M&S.

One over-65-year-old I spoke to was Angela, who did not want to give her full name. She said: "When John Lewis went, that was the nail in the coffin really. It has had a big knock-on effect. The city centre has deteriorated."

Businessman Salih Ekmekeioglu said things are so bad he might not renew the lease on his Westgate Grill premises when it expires next year.

"Unfortunately, all the big businesses are leaving the town centre now," said the 54-year-old.

"People aren't coming to the town centre any more."

He thinks Bristow's idea for more free parking is the key that could unlock Peterborough's potential.

Salih is part of the Peterborough Positive business improvement district that has brought free Sunday parking to the Queensgate. He said it helped increase sales by 27%.

The perceived decline in parts of the county is certainly felt by Reform's candidate. Coogan said the reason he stood was because he was "fed up with seeing total decline in Cambridgeshire".

"Everywhere you look, you cannot say that anything is actually working for anybody," he said.

Bristow's opponents have said they are confused about how he will pay for his big ideas, such as dualling the key A47 and A10 roads, considering he has ruled out raising the mayoral precept on council tax.

Coogan said: "The Conservatives in this campaign are promising so much that just cannot be delivered. None of it can be delivered within the constraints of the budgets and cash available."

Bristow described criticism of freezing the mayoral precept as a "red herring", given the £11.2million raised by the £36-a-year charge for a Band D household in 2025-26 is a tiny amount in the context of public spending.

"How I'm going to fund these big infrastructure challenges is the same way they've been funded in Birmingham, in Manchester and Tees Valley," he said.

"That's by using the ability to borrow against your expected revenue to unlock projects and then combine the rest of it either with public money from government or private money from the private sector.

"It's not going to be paid for by me putting a few pence on the mayoral precept."

He was adamant that and that the solution is a "relentless focus on making the public sector more productive - doing a lot fewer things, but doing them better".

Labour's national failure to do so, as he sees it, is damaging its chances in Cambridgeshire, he thinks.

"Do I think there's any love for Labour? No, not at all," he said. "That's why they've and why people are so disappointed initially."

He said there was a backlash against Labour in Cambridge, where it has traditionally been strong but has irritated many with a proposed congestion charge.

"Not everyone is how you would imagine them to be in Cambridge - they're not all cyclists eating avocado on toast, delicious as that may be," said Bristow.

"They want to see someone who's going to say no to a congestion charge for Cambridge, because the solution of the Left is always to try to .

"I think there's a reason their support is - it's because I think people have seen a party that's not ready for government in many ways and one that's been a bit vindictive, going after those people who they don't traditionally see as supporting them."

Coogan has also noticed anger towards Labour in its heartlands. But many Tories are more worried about the threat of Reform and would like their party to .

On Reform, Bristow urges colleagues "not to get overly wound up on their ideological or their party political positions".

"We can't control what does, so why worry about it?" he asked.

"You have to respect and understand why people are voting Reform. The same goes for the Liberal Democrats.

"No one in Cambridge is voting for the Liberal Democrats because they want to become prime minister.

"The reason people are voting for Reform and is because they're not the Conservatives or Labour. They're not voting Liberal Democrat or Reform because they endorse everything in their manifestos or are ideologically aligned to them.

"While it's a protest vote ... we can't just dismiss it as that. We've got to understand why it's a protest vote. It's because they're not us - that's what we need to deal with.

"We just have to focus on ourselves and being a decent alternative to a Labour government and the votes will come."

David Wheeler, a resident of the Werrington and Gunthorpe area who is considering voting for Bristow, perhaps proves the candidate's point.

"The former MP did a reasonable job as a constituency MP," said the 77-year-old.

"I didn't vote for him and I'm not necessarily in favour of his views, but I recognise he was active and did things for Peterborough."

Westgate Grill owner Salih, who we met earlier, similarly said he did not know much about politics but supported Bristow because of his actions.

If Bristow wins on May 1, it will surely give the Tories hope.

But perhaps the biggest lesson will be that getting hung up on Nigel Farage's latest broadside or Labour's mishaps is a fool's errand.

As David and Salih show, many voters couldn't care less about political parties and their ideologies. They just want someone who will doggedly fight for their interests.

Maybe the key to winning in politics is more straightforward than it seems.