Parliament is in recess, and East Riding Council’s main chamber has gone quiet until September. If you assumed that meant the region’s political leaders were topping up their tans, you’d be wrong — or at least, you’d be wrong about this one. As always with Beverley Review, we are trying to show the rare truths about our local leaders. Rather than do them down for the sake of clicks, we want to highlight the positive work and contribution so many of them make to our area. That doesn’t mean they get a free ride, but for this series, we dial down the politics, and take a look at the day to day work that needs to be done to keep our town and county running during the summer period.
This is the first in a short series in which Beverley Review catches up with local political figures to find out what actually fills their August, what’s on their playlist, and why they rate the East Riding as a summer destination. We start with the Leader of East Riding Council, Anne Handley.
Mr Benn, minus the shopkeeper
Talk to Anne Handley for ten minutes and the packed diary becomes the whole story. Days that start at 8am and don’t finish until 11pm; a route that criss-crosses the East Riding rather than settling anywhere for long.
“I feel like Mr Benn,” she says. “A quick change in the ladies and off to another event.”
It’s a good line, and not just because it’s funny. It’s also, on inspection, a fairly accurate description of what a council leader’s summer actually looks like: business meeting, ribbon-cutting, resident’s front room, repeat. The suit may change; the pace doesn’t.
Family gets what’s left over. “They hardly ever see me because I am so busy,” she admits — matter-of-factly rather than for sympathy — before adding that she’s hoping to claw back some proper time with them before the diary fills up again in autumn.
The playlist test
Ask a politician for their summer playlist and you usually learn more about their media training than their taste. Anne’s choices are a mixed bag, which is more interesting.
“I feel like Mr Benn,” she says. “A quick change in the ladies and off to another event.”
What Have You Done Today to Make You Feel Proud? by M People gets the on-message answer — a reminder, she says, that helping even one person makes the day worthwhile. Fine, if predictable. Sinatra’s My Way and Beyoncé’s Listen — the latter, she says, a nod to the idea that everyone has something to contribute, even if they don’t always know it — keep things in similarly safe territory.
Then: the Eagles’ Hotel California.
“It’s like politics,” she says. “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
It’s a very honest answer — and it sits oddly, and rather well, next to her closing pick, the Average White Band’s Let’s Go Round Again, delivered with a knowing smile and one eye already on next year’s local elections.
“2027… here we come.”
The pitch for the East Riding
On what makes the East Riding worth seeing in summer, Handley is fluent — this is clearly not the first time she’s answered the question, but it doesn’t sound worse for it.
“I’ll be out and about across the thousand square miles we call home — our market towns, our coastal communities, our rural areas. There’s wine tasting, canoeing, so much to enjoy. We’re incredibly diverse.”
And on what all those long days are actually for, the language shifts into something closer to a briefing note: “Investment, jobs, skills, new homes, improving transport — all important to the growth of our region. I’m working on it.” It’s the kind of line that will mean either everything or nothing by next summer, depending on what, if anything, has moved by then. Worth revisiting in twelve months.
Recess isn’t rest
None of which is a complaint, exactly. It’s a reasonably convincing account of the unglamorous, unwitnessed part of local politics — the bit that happens once the council chamber empties out and the cameras go home. Whether it adds up to results residents can point to is, as ever, a different question — one Beverley Review will be asking again well before 2027.