When Tracy Brabin was a child, her mum ran Betty’s Café in Birstall, West Yorkshire, where the lemon drizzle cake was legendary.

It was a family affair – Tracy’s gran washed up for no wages. Her dad, a sewing machine salesman, was often out of work, so Betty’s fed the family and paid the rent on their two-bed council flat.

Tomorrow, Brabin will stand again for election as Mayor of West Yorkshire, the image of her mother working long hours in the café etched on her mind. Betty Brabin died last November aged 93 but after a painful period of limbo her inquest was only held last week during the final days of Tracy’s poll campaign.

“Everything I have done as mayor – and want to do if re-elected – has been influenced by Mum,” the former actress says when we meet over breakfast. “My mum made me who I am today. My dad was in and out of work, so it was Mum who had to make Betty’s cafe work. She didn’t have the chances I want everyone else from the Howden Clough estate to have.”

Everything from her pledges to build 5,000 affordable homes to fixing transport by putting buses under local control and a plan for a tram network, from widening education to creating jobs and letting people’s creativity flourish is about offering opportunities that could have transformed a life like mum Betty’s.

“I grew up in a cramped two-bedroom council flat,” Brabin, 62, says of bringing her experience as a free school meals kid to her mayor role. “So, to meet a family where a mother who is pregnant and has been evicted via a ‘no-fault eviction’ is able to move into her own home in Kirklees because of our housing programme, I can think, ‘You’re going to be OK, your future is bright’.”

I started asking Brabin which part of her career made her mum happiest – becoming Labour MP for Batley and Spen, being Mayor of West Yorkshire or playing Tricia Armstrong in Corrie – but she finished the sentence for me.

“Coronation Street every day of the week!” laughed Brabin, whose 90s co-stars included Kevin Kennedy (Curly Watts). “Mum didn’t really understand what the job of mayor was. She’d say, ‘You looked beautiful on the television’ though when she’d seen me on the news.

On June 16, 2016, when local MP Jo Cox was murdered outside Birstall Library, Betty was inside Knit and Natter locked down with the other terrified occupants – and it was some time before her family knew she was safe.