“What do Labour stand for?” – On the ground in Hartlepool

A crowd is gathering along the marina in the coastal town of Hartlepool, next to a 30ft inflatable of Boris Johnson. Directly underneath it, the PM himself is addressing onlookers. “The Conservative Party is focussed on change,” he says, “and Jill will do just that.” 

Just as he is laying out his vision of the North East as a centre of industrial green revolution, the blow-up figure topples over in the wind. Life-size Boris takes a moment to joke with his audience, while it is re-erected: his doppelgänger reminds him, he says, “of superintendent Ted Hastings from Line Of Duty.”

It is the PM’s fourth trip to the Brexit heartland in a matter of weeks but this time, he is standing beside Hartlepool’s newly-elected MP, Jill Mortimer – the first Tory candidate to have won the seat since the constituency was created in 1964. It’s also only the third time in half a century that a governing party has made a gain in a by-election. 

Mortimer, a district councillor and farmer from North Yorkshire, who is walking up and down the waterfront, says Hartlepudlians in the former Labour stronghold have been ignored for too long. 

Of course, on this particular week, the residents of Hartlepool have been anything but ignored. This ‘left behind’, ‘forgotten’ post-industrial town has garnered vast national attention.

Hartlepool was one of Labour’s red wall seats that didn’t turn blue in 2019, though it’s generally thought that the party only held onto it thanks to the Brexit Party splitting the eurosceptic vote.

The Hartlepool by-election was Starmer’s first big test of his ability to win back voters in red wall seats and turn the tide of the 2019 election result.

Yet Starmer has failed to prove that he is capable of stopping the northern rot; in fact, the loss of a seat suggests things could be getting worse for Labour. And, while the Brexit Party may have won Labour the seat last time round, it’s hard for Starmer to pin the blame on Corbyn when Labour won Hartlepool with a comfortable majority in 2015. The defeat is a crushing one for Starmer. 

Johnson meanwhile, is jubilant. He is celebrating with a pint inside Hartlepool’s Jackson’s Wharf pub. Speaking to those loitering outside the pub, it seems the PM’s handful of trips to the town helped him curry favour. “People like that he turns up here, he seems to care about the North,” says a middle-aged engineer and self-professed “converted Conservative”.

Of course, it’s also true that the Labour leader has visited the town twice in recent weeks. Yet his outings appear to have had less impact. “When Boris comes round the town, he seemed genuinely excited to be here. You can’t miss him. No one noticed when Keir Starmer came,” says the converted Conservative. 

“He blends into the walls,” his friend chimes in. 

A middle-aged woman, walking around the marina with her daughter says she’s warmed to Boris mainly because of his dad – her favourite contestant on I’m a Celebrity. 

But it’s not just personality factors or seemingly trivial reasons like reality TV shows which shaped how locals cast their vote.

The consensus among those gathered on the marina is that the Conservative Party has done a better job at convincing locals they will “champion” the town of Hartlepool. People seem hopeful that the levelling up agenda will push cash into regions that need it.

There is an overriding sense that the town has been neglected. “No one does anything for Hartlepool” and “people wanted a change” are both common refrains. 

Once a thriving blue-collar port, Hartlepool saw its manufacturing and steel industries collapse in the 1970s and 80s. It is now one of the most deprived towns in the country, with the second highest unemployment rate. 

A “Hartlepool born and bred” retired process operator, milling around the marina, laments the decline of the town. So many of the store fronts are bordered up, “even our prestige hotel”, he says. “A church in the town centre burned down two years ago, and no one’s done anything about it. And most of the green public spaces are weeds; we used to have beautiful floral gardens.”

Dr Paul Williams, the Labour candidate who stood against Mortimer, says one of the biggest challenges is convincing voters that blame for cuts to local services lies with the government, and not Labour, which has controlled the council on and off since the 1970s. 

His message doesn’t appear to be cutting through. The retiree, who voted for Mortimer in the by-election, insists it’s the council and local government which has mishandled the money. “Labour have been in charge of the town. They’re the ones who’ve neglected it.”

Crucially, locals have also been swayed by what many are dubbing the “Ben Houchen effect”. Houchen, the incumbent Tory mayor for the Tees Valley – a region which includes Hartlepool – is highly popular. Locals believe Houchen has made a big impact on the area in the past couple of years – and he gets money delivered for big shiny projects.

The retiree says he delivers on his promises. “He said he’d buy back the Teesside airport and he made it work.” Houchen has also been credited with saving a number of steel and engineering businesses that would otherwise have gone under.

In the town centre, Jessica, a 17 year-old sixth form student from a family of loyal labour supporters is eating her lunch outside the main shopping centre. “I thought Hartlepool would be a Labour town forever”, she says. Her mum – a carer who has lived here all her life – voted Labour today but she was torn this time. “Redcar voted Tory in 2019 and they’ve already seen change.” In Redcar, a nearby red wall seat which turned blue at the last election, “some of the houses are already looking nicer and there’s more attractions,” she says.  

Back on the marina, the newly elected Jill Mortimer is citing the establishment of a treasury in the newly blue seat of Darlington as another example of successful levelling up. “The people of Hartlepool have seen what is happening in Darlington with the Treasury North move and they’re saying, ‘we want a piece of that’”, she tells those still lingering by the water. 

Some have argued that Labour’s downfall in Hartlepool is in large part down to poor choice of candidate. Indeed, it may have been foolish to place arch-remainer Dr Williams – who broke the Labour whip on six occasions as an MP to support a second referendum – in a seat where nearly 70 per cent of people voted to leave the EU. 

But ultimately, this doesn’t really feel like it’s about Brexit anymore. Brexit feels symptomatic of a more fundamental realignment in British politics. The attitude of voting Labour just to sustain tradition is fading – and alongside it, we’re witnessing a shift in loyalty in certain communities. Many residents argue that Labour needs to make it clearer what they’re actually offering. 

Michael Thompson, a 42 year-old Hartlepudlian, works in retail and voted Conservative in the by-election. He says his days of feeling familial pressure to vote Labour are over. “We hear ‘you’ve got to vote Labour, they’re for the working man’, but times have changed. The phrase just continues with no real substance.” 

It’s noticeable that Thompson and many others in the town are remarkably forgiving of so many of Boris’s blunders. Vaccine bounce aside, attitudes towards his mishandling of the pandemic are fairly sympathetic. “He was always gunna have half the country against him no matter what he did. I don’t envy him for that,” says Thompson. 

Discussions of Tory sleaze seem to garner little interest either. Those outside the Jackson’s Wharf pub are quick to dismiss the whole flat refurbishment scandal as “childish”. “I don’t give a toss about wallpaper!” adds Thompson. 

Some may feel infuriated to hear that the PM is being let off the hook so easily. But even so, they might agree with Thompson’s wider objection to the wallpaper ‘fuss’: “Labour are trying to win the election by being ‘not Boris.’ That’s not enough. What do they stand for?” 

“People are voting for Labour just to vote against Boris. It needs to be a vote for them, not just a protest vote.”

“Starmer sits on the fence,” he adds. “Labour doesn’t have a passionate voice.”