The local political landscape is littered with the bodies of defeated Conservatives this year.

The two most high-profile victims were Andrew Jones, who lost his Harrogate and Knaresborough seat to Liberal Democrat Tom Gordon in the general election and Keane Duncan, who lost to Labour’s David Skaith in the race to become York and North Yorkshire’s first mayor.

North Yorkshire, once staunchly blue, is now also red and yellow. But one Conservative has withstood the maelstrom to remain the party’s most powerful local figure.

Carl Les, 75, has been leader of North Yorkshire Council and its predecessor North Yorkshire County Council since 2015.

He has withstood local government reorganisation and even the loss of his party’s majority on the council by persuading three Independents to join a Conservatives and Independents group to shore up support.

So who is this great political survivor who leads a local authority that employs some 13,000 staff and has a £1.4 billion budget, and what does he know about the Harrogate district? 

Half-Polish Yorkshireman

Carl Les was born in Ilkley in 1949, went to school in York and polytechnic in Leeds. His maternal grandparents ran the Cow and Calf Hotel on Ilkley Moor “so I reckon I am as much Yorkshire as anyone even though I am half Polish”, he quips.

His dad escaped from a prisoner of war camp in Germany to Britain during the Second World War and shortly afterwards met his English wife in Newcastle at the exact same place where he would collapse and die of a heart attack in 1988.

He bought Jock’s Café in Leeming village in 1947, renamed it Leeming Café and, in his son's words, turned it into "an absolute goldmine". When the family heard a bypass was being built, they bought a field at Leeming Bar and built a 12-bed hotel with café and restaurant for £40,000 in 1961. 

Customers wanted to know where the petrol station was, so they eventually built one in 1973. The site, originally called Motel Leeming, eventually became known as Leeming Bar Services.

Young Carl helped as a boy but left home to study at hotel school in Glasgow, where he says he had “socialist leanings for about a month” when Rolls-Royce put thousands of men out of work at its Paisley factory.

After a spell as a Trusthouse Forte junior manager at Newport Pagnell, he returned home in 1974 when his father suffered the first of three heart attacks and they ran the business together, often clashing, until his dad died.

After a successful but costly £250,000 legal battle to pursue motorway service area status, Carl Les sold Leeming Bar Services in 2014. “Moto came along – very honest — and said ‘this isn’t the best site on the A1 but we own all the rest and we don’t want anybody else to be on the A1 as competitors so we will buy it’.” 

Political latecomer

By this time Les — the family name was Leś, pronounced Lesh in Polish — had become Cllr Les. He became politically active in his mid-40s when the Tory leader of Hambleton District Council asked if he’d consider standing for election in 1995 following a Britain in Bloom meeting. He recalls:

“I said, ‘you don’t even know what my politics are’. She said ‘I think you are probably one of us. In this council there’s 50 seats I’ve got 45 of them so I’m not bothered if you’re not.”

He was elected and became a ‘twin-hatter’ in 1997 when he was also voted on to North Yorkshire County Council.

In 2010 he was promoted to the county council executive — effectively it’s cabinet — and in 2015 became county council leader. He was a major supporter of local government reorganisation and there was little surprise when he emerged as leader of the new North Yorkshire Council in 2022 while other Tory council leaders, including Richard Cooper at Harrogate Borough Council, fell by the wayside.

Colleagues say his bluff, affable exterior hides a shrewd political brain. He describes himself as “pragmatic” rather than “overtly political”. He adds:

Why didn’t he stand for mayor this year? “I was too old to take on that challenge because it would require an awful lot of energy and flying about.”

He remains a huge fan of departing leader Rishi Sunak, who he describes as “a brilliant, really genuine guy and a very clever person” and blames the party’s crushing general election defeat on “poor performance that started with Boris trying to change the rules to get a mate off partly charges”, adding:

Cllr Les is also friends with former Tory leader William Hague and is invited to a party at his house each year. Who would he like to be the next party leader?

He swerves the question by answering ‘Rishi’. Neither he nor Ripon and Skipton MP Sir Julian Smith have told voters who they are backing.

Harrogate connections 

Cllr Les lives in Kirklington, a village between Ripon and Bedale, represents Catterick and Brompton-on-Swale and leads a council based in Northallerton. What do he and his colleagues know about the Harrogate district?

He says elected councillors and the area constituency committees provide local representation. As for himself, he’s been shopping in Harrogate since his mum brought took him there as a child and he’s had the same dentist on Mount Parade and same hairdresser on Commercial Street for more than 40 years. 

He says his dad built what is now the Ford dealership in Knaresborough with a view to moving here. He says: “Geography is less important than the ability to do the job. We are well aware of the issues in Harrogate. It’s a very well educated and vocal population.”

What does he think should happen to Harrogate Convention Centre, which faces an uncertain future? He says “the future is quite possibly some sort of joint venture with people who perhaps know more about operating conference centres than the council do”. You can read his fuller answer here, as well as his views on the Harrogate Station Gateway.

As for the council, he remains convinced local government reorganisation was a good thing. If you think the cuts now are bad, imagine what they would have been like with seven district councils and a county council, appears to be the message.

Away from politics, Cllr Les says he enjoys “good food and wine, cooking and reading things other than council papers”. He’s currently on Jeffrey Archer’s final William Warwick novel. He will be 77 when the next council election is due in 2027. Will he stand? “My wife will be the first person to know. Rishi will be the second.”

After surviving the cull of seven councils in North Yorkshire and a devastating 18 months for the Tories, it would be brave to write him off.