Hartlepool & Houchen - how and why so many in the North East have switched sides
On stage at Thornaby Pavilion on Friday afternoon, having been re-elected as Tees Valley Mayor with a quite remarkable 73% of the vote, Ben Houchen declared that the Conservatives are "the new party of the north."
That is, of course, to exaggerate things somewhat, but there is an increasingly thick blue line - you might even call it a wall - stretching from coast to coast, with Hartlepool the latest parliamentary staging post.
Labour's bonds with the places that were once their North East heartlands have been slowly weakening for decades, alongside the decline of heavy industry and trade union membership. Enough voters, though, stuck with the party - seeing little alternative, as 'Tory' was still a dirty word - until recently.
Houchen's initial election in 2017 was a pivotal moment of change. In a quirk of timing, it came during the snap general election campaign, when Theresa May still had a double-digit lead in the polls, before the 'dementia tax' manifesto meltdown. Perhaps helped by the fact the Tees Valley mayorship was a brand new role, he earned a narrow but shock Conservative victory.
In the four years since, opponents have questioned his job creation numbers and transparency around public funding but, with a slick PR operation, he's focused on several key projects - like Teesside Airport and the former SSI steelworks site in Redcar - and made progress that's clearly earned the respect of very many voters.In the May 2019 local elections Labour lost control of several Teesside councils, and at the December 2019 general election they lost seven seats to the Conservatives in the North East.
By that point, Labour's relationship with many of its traditional supporters had been ruptured by Brexit, with many MPs (like this month's Hartlepool candidate Dr Paul Williams) fighting against what their constituents had voted for, and the party eventually arguing for a second referendum.
Those chastening losses 18 months ago were blamed on Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn's unpopularity. The results over the last couple of days - which have also included the Conservatives getting a majority on Northumberland County Council and a big win in the Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner contest - strongly suggest that was not just an awkward moment in time for Labour. Sir Keir Starmer has not been able to stop the rot, and actually a more fundamental shift is occurring.
British politics is no longer about left-right economic arguments, particularly when you think about the interventionism of Houchen, and the government during the pandemic. Prompted in large part by the EU referendum, the dividing lines are now much more about identity, and Boris Johnson's Tories have more in common with many socially conservative working-class voters than a socially liberal Labour party often seen as 'out of touch.' On the flipside, Labour have held firm in local elections on Tyneside, which has more metropolitan streaks, and made gains in several mayoral elections down south.
Hartlepool though was the biggest prize on offer in England this May, and the Tories won it with a majority of nearly 7,000. After 57 years of Labour MPs, I spoke to many people who'd simply had enough of voting that way and seeing the town decline. The loss of services at its hospital is a source of much local anger, but it seems Labour got the blame, despite the Conservatives being in government for the last 11 years. It reflects on how successfully Johnson and co. have managed to distance themselves from the austerity years, with the pandemic providing another clean slate, and governing parties around the UK rewarded for delivering vaccinations.
The new MP Jill Mortimer's rather curious answers when I asked about what she'd do for Hartlepool now betrays the fact that the Conservatives didn't need to campaign on much more than 'change' and 'investment.' In big picture terms the government calls its plans 'levelling up', and in the last couple of months alone we've seen the announcement of a new Treasury campus in Darlington, a freeport for Teesside and a number of pots of funding for smaller regeneration schemes, particularly in areas with Conservative MPs. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, in purely strategic terms Labour fell into the trap of crying foul about 'pork-barrel politics', as a number of people in Hartlepool told me about wanting to get in on the action.
It's clear many former Labour voters switched first to UKIP or the Brexit Party, before making the leap to the Conservatives this week. It's further evidence of the appeal of Boris Johnson, shaking off questions about his conduct and being able to reach places other Tories can't - except perhaps Ben Houchen, who could be destined for the top one day.Alongside recriminations within Labour ranks this weekend, Starmer's main message is that he needs more time to rebuild. That makes sense, particularly as his first year as leader has been dominated by coronavirus.
But there's not much time to lose. Perhaps the most galling of the results in our region was the last, on Saturday night, as Labour lost overall control of Durham County Council for the first time in nearly a century. It's highly symbolic in the home of the Miners' Gala. In a reverse version of how Houchen laid the groundwork on Teesside, County Durham's new Tory MPs seem to have provided a path for the party to gain more local councillors.While Labour lick their wounds, the Conservatives' power base in the North East grows and grows.