[2] Standing for The Conservative Party, Palmer was elected as East Cambridgeshire District Councillor for the Soham North ward for the first time in 2007 and re-elected in 2011 and 2015.

[citation needed] As leader of East Cambridgeshire District Council, he helped secure the funding for the Ely southern bypass to alleviate congestion in the city.

[6] In the run-up to the election, Palmer told Cambridge News, that he would invest in transport infrastructure to help business growth spread across the whole of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough and make job opportunities accessible to more people.

[11] Palmer aimed to progress with work on delivering a metro system in Cambridgeshire, with underground tunnelling in Cambridge city centre.

[13] In March 2018 Palmer announced he would be supporting the A47 Alliance campaign for full dualling of the trunk road from the A1 near Peterborough to Lowestoft in Suffolk.

[25] During the mayoral election campaign in 2021, the 100k policy was heavily criticised as giving 'false hope' and that the rate of progress was so slow that it would take 'a thousand years' to house everyone who was waiting for a home in the area.

That included public services like skills, training and apprenticeships, as well as fiscal devolution to gain some control over taxes and revenues generated within combined authority areas.

[28] Palmer established an independent panel led by the chief executive of Adnams to investigate public sector reform in Cambridgeshire.

[29] In September 2017, Palmer promoted a former colleague councillor at East Cambridgeshire District Council, Tom Hunt (who in 2019 became MP for Ipswich), to the combined authority as his chief of staff.

[40] In July 2020, Conservative Minister of State Simon Clarke wrote to the Mayor criticising him on a number of issues "…which suggest that the delivery capacity of the combined authority requires improvement."

A large majority of supplementary votes went to the Labour candidate and the final count saw Palmer receive 48.7% of the total, with Johnson winning on 51.3%.