Hartlepool’s Headland juts out into the North Sea like an eagle’s talon. The grand Victorian terraces that line its seafront were once home to the town’s founding fathers, who built Britain’s most productive shipyard and attracted royal visits and enemy bombs. These five-bedroom sea views now sell for half the price of a London flat but are well beyond the reach of the modern-day Hartlepudlian. Behind the once-mighty shipyard live some of the poorest families in Britain, a legacy of the decline after its last ship sailed off in 1961. It was also, perhaps not coincidentally, the last time Hartlepool sent a Conservative MP to Westminster. In seven weeks, the town has the opportunity to upend 60 years of political tradition and sever its ties to the Labour party in the first byelection of this parliament, after the sudden resignation of the MP Mike Hill over allegations of sexual harassment, which he denies. A victory for the Conservatives would send shockwaves through the Labour party and bolster the once-in-a-generation upheaval at the heart of British politics. If Labour survives, it will embolden Keir Starmer and cast doubt on whether in post-Brexit elections Boris Johnson can rely on the voters who gave him a landslide victory in 2019. The street-level battle for Hartlepool has not yet begun but the mood on the ground spells danger for Labour. “At one point Labour could’ve sent Donald Duck and he would’ve got in here, but not now,” said Diane Stephens, a lifelong Labour voter and manager of the Heugh Battery Museum. The “phenomenal” success of the region’s young Conservative mayor, Ben Houchen, coupled with the implosion of Hartlepool’s Labour party, has left Stephens considering voting Tory for the first time. “Perish the thought,” she said in mock outrage. “My father would turn in his grave. I honestly don’t know.”
Voters like Stephens are no longer swayed by Brexit – Hartlepool’s 70% vote to leave the EU was the highest in the region – but are thinking about the exit from lockdown and perennial local issues around jobs, houses and healthcare. There is little sign that Johnson will be punished for the UK recording one of the world’s worst death rates from coronavirus. The Conservatives seem more likely to benefit from the optimism surrounding the vaccination programme and the imminent return of liberties. Further playing into the Tories’ hands is the EU’s threat to halt exports of the vaccine to Britain, which will reprise anti-Brussels sentiment among some voters. “I think there will be an echo of Brexit in terms of how the Europeans are now dealing with AstraZeneca,” said Sacha Bedding, who runs a pioneering community scheme in one of Hartlepool’s most deprived communities. “That reads like they want Britain to fail and want to kick us. I don’t personally think that’s true but that’s how you can spin it.”
Support for Labour has gradually ebbed away in Hartlepool, as it has across the party’s post-industrial heartlands. The share of the vote has slumped from 61% in New Labour’s heyday, when Peter Mandelson was the local MP, to 38%, and its majority has been cut to just over 3,500. The town, which feels isolated even from the rest of north-east England, has long been fertile ground for rightwing parties. Nigel Farage described Hartlepool as Ukip’s best hope of a parliamentary seat in 2014, a year before his party came runner-up in the town. More recently, the Brexit party briefly had political control of the council – the first in the country – and took a whopping 26% of the vote in the 2019 election, enough to snatch victory from the Conservatives. Hartlepool has become one of Labour’s last redoubts in the Teesside area. Five of its neighbouring constituencies have turned blue since 2017, a political earthquake that fortified Johnson’s landslide victory two years later. Even diehard Labour members praise Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor, for bringing tidal waves of cash to an area in desperate need of reinvention. Houchen’s freeport initiative, backed by the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, led him to declare this month’s budget as “the day Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool was reborn as an industrial powerhouse”. Tribal loyalties have become less clearcut. “I’m not a Tory and I never will be; however, he’s just brought this freeport. The good that that is going to do to my little town – it’s fabulous,” said Paddy Brown, who resigned as leader of the local Labour group three months ago over what he described as the “toxicity” of the party. “I would not be allowed to say that if I was in the Labour party. Tory or not, well done,” he said, adding that the Conservatives would “walk home” if Houchen contested the byelection. “If we’re being honest, if the Brexit party hadn’t have stood last time we’d have a Tory MP by now.” Labour and the Conservatives are both desperate to avoid the three-horse race that split the last vote. Richard Tice, the chair of the anti-lockdown Reform UK party, has called on the Conservatives to stand aside, while both main parties are understood to be urging his outfit not to stand. Labour has named its candidate as Paul Williams, who lost his seat in neighbouring Stockton South in 2019. Williams, a GP, has worked on the Covid frontline throughout the pandemic, while his wife is a nurse who has been delivering vaccines. His highly orchestrated selection has irked members of the Labour left but he is perhaps the party’s best hope. His candidacy got off to a rocky start on Friday, however, when he apologised for “inappropriate” tweets sent 10 years ago, including one referring to a “favourite Tory milf” and another that compared a burglary at the home of the Conservative MP Liam Fox to a sexual harassment scene in a movie. Alex Cunningham, the Labour MP for neighbouring Stockton North, said the party had “considerable challenges” and that the byelection was at a “difficult time”, but they would have the answers to people’s concerns on local issues. It was “absolute nonsense” to suggest a defeat could prove fatal for Starmer’s leadership, he said. “Keir was election leader just over a year ago in very, very difficult circumstances, so I don’t think we can judge Keir’s leadership on what happens in Hartlepool.” The Conservatives, who jointly run the borough council, have not yet announced their candidate but there is clamour for a locally known name. Whoever it is has the chance to make political history and be the town’s first Tory MP since Harold Macmillan was in No 10. Ray Martin-Wells, the honorary president of the Hartlepool Conservatives, can barely conceal his glee. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was the perfect time for us,” he said. “We’re extremely excited about the opportunity.”