Dame Andrea Jenkyns has been elected as the mayor of Greater Lincolnshire, giving the party she represents, Reform UK, its most powerful office to date.

In her victory speech, she declared it was a “new dawn in British politics” and vowed Reform would “reset Britain to its glorious past”.

She beat the Conservative candidate by more than 40,000 votes, which will feel like like a personal vindication for the former Tory MP.

A former Greggs worker and Miss UK finalist, Dame Andrea will now control an annual budget of £24m and hold powers over skills, transport and economic development in the region.

The result marks a remarkable political comeback for an MP voted out less than a year ago in the general election.

But as Dame Andrea’s meandering political career shows, she has form for bouncing back from crushing disappointments with attention-grabbing election wins.

It all started in 2009, when she won a seat on Lincolnshire County Council, narrowly defeating the far-right British National Party’s candidate.

The result did not stand for long though. She was forced to resign after it emerged her part-time job as a music tutor for a council-run music service made her ineligible to run as a candidate.

A by-election was held and Jenkyns squeaked home by 16 votes, again ahead of the BNP.

Four years on, she lost her council seat to UKIP, a Eurosceptic party founded by Nigel Farage – Reform UK’s leader and, ironically, now Dame Andrea’s boss.

Two years passed before her next comeback in 2015, when she burst onto the national scene with one of the biggest shocks of the general election that year.

She ousted shadow chancellor Ed Balls, winning the Morley and Outwood constituency by 422 votes and knocking a brick out of Labour’s red wall.

Jenkyns – who worked at a Greggs bakery after leaving school at 16 – said she was “lost for words”.

In her campaign, she presented herself as a “strong Yorkshire lass” from humble beginnings.

Born in Humberside in 1974, Jenkyns went straight into a job after finishing school, working her way up from a Saturday shop assistant to senior management.

An amateur opera singer and a vocal coach, she also worked as a music tutor in secondary schools.

When she hit her 30s, she decided to retrain and completed a diploma in economics from the Open University before graduating from the University of Lincoln aged 40 after studying international relations and politics.

Her father was a lorry driver with his own haulage business.

He pushed her towards the limelight at an early age, entering her in the Miss UK beauty contest.

“My dad sent my photo off without telling me and I ended up getting into the final,” she told the Express newspaper.

“It was an interesting moment.”

Her father’s death in 2011 – after he contracted the MRSA infection in hospital – spurred her to run for Parliament.

As an MP, Jenkyns was a passionate Brexit backer and a strong critic of Theresa May’s handling of the UK’s departure from the EU when she was prime minister.

In a striking intervention at Prime Minister’s Questions, Jenkyns said May had “failed to deliver on her promises” and suggested she should resign.

Once May had stood aside, Jenkyns found favour with Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who appointed her as an assistant government whip in 2021 and a junior education minister a year later.

A loyal ally, Jenkyns consistently defended Johnson, including during her appearance on the BBC’s Have I Got News For You programme, when she described him as “one of our better prime ministers”.

When Johnson resigned in 2022, Jenkyns lost her composure outside Downing Street.

She was filmed giving the middle finger to protesters shortly before Johnson’s resignation.

A backlash followed and in her defence, Jenkyns said she was “only human” and had received “huge amounts of abuse from some of the people who were there over the years”.

“I responded and stood up for myself,” she said.

She was made a dame in Johnson’s resignation honours in 2023.

Jenkyns retained her ministerial role under Liz Truss but was later dismissed by the following prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

She then failed to win re-election to the successor seat of Leeds South West and Morley at the 2024 general election.

Back in the political wilderness, Jenkyns began flirting with Reform UK last year.

Dame Andrea had made clear her sympathies with Nigel Farage’s party, urging the Conservatives to unite with it to prevent a Labour “supermajority” at the general election.

Attending Reform UK’s conference last autumn, Dame Andrea insisted she was “not defecting” but was keen to find out whether Farage’s party was “the true home of conservatism”.

Two months later, Jenkyns announced she was officially joining Reform UK and would stand as the party’s candidate to be mayor of Greater Lincolnshire.

Dame Andrea said she had “fought to the bitter end” but the Conservative Party was now “beyond salvage”.

Twelve years on from her defeat to Farage’s former party in a local election in Lincolnshire, Jenkyns has delivered a significant electoral victory for her former foe.

Back in the county where it all began, the new mayor has once again proved her bouncebackability.