A Conservative triumph in Hartlepool is a bleak day for Labour

INCUMBENT PRIME MINISTERS have historically stayed away from by-election campaigns, for they usually lose them, often by embarrassing margins. Only twice in 40 years has the party in power gained a seat. Boris Johnson’s repeated visits to the seafront in Hartlepool, a poor north-eastern town which has elected Labour MPs since 1964, to kick footballs, drink tea and pose for selfies, were a sign of the party’s confidence.

It was justified. In 2019, Labour won Hartlepool with 15,464 votes (38%), to the Conservatives’ 11,869 (29%). On May 6th, the Tories polled 15,529 votes (52%), while Labour slipped to 8,589 (29%). In early results from local elections that took place on the same day, the Tories also gained control of the councils of Northumberland, Nuneaton and Bedworth, Dudley and Harlow. Britons will have to wait until the weekend for a full picture, for some of the results, from elections to 143 English councils, 13 mayoralties and the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, will not come in till then. Still, May 7th was a bleak day for Sir Keir Starmer, who took over as Labour leader a year ago from the hard-left Jeremy Corbyn after the party's worst election performance since 1935.

The campaign was overshadowed by allegations that Mr Johnson had improperly sought donations to refurbish his flat. Labour’s candidate, Paul Williams, was a family doctor who has worked in clinics during the pandemic, which has hit the town hard, and witnessed the government's early missteps in managing it. None of that mattered much. Jill Mortimer, the new MP, declared her victory a sign that Labour had “taken people in Hartlepool for granted for too long”. Steve Reed, the shadow communities secretary, said it showed voters didn’t believe the party had yet changed under the new leader. Momentum, a campaign group loyal to Mr Corbyn, decried the consequence of “replacing meaningful policy with empty buzzwords”.

How voters regard the parties today is not a robust predictor of how they will feel at the next election, likely to take place in 2023 or 2024. After a faltering response to covid-19, the government is enjoying a remarkable bounce after its speedy vaccine programme. (Some 85% of Britons think their government has handled the vaccine well, compared with 18% of French and 13% of Germans.) That has triggered a surge in economic optimism, as Britons fill pubs and shops. The economy is slingshotting: after a 9.75% fall in GDP in 2020, the Bank of England expects it to grow by 7.25% this year, before slowing to 5.75% in 2022 and a meagre 1.25% in 2023.

Yet this is not enough to explain Labour’s parlous result in Hartlepool. The scale of the defeat deepens Labour’s fear that Mr Corbyn’s performance in 2019 is not necessarily its nadir, and that it has much further to fall. A review into 2019’s result led by Ed Miliband, the shadow business secretary and a former Labour leader, concluded that there was no sign of any abating of a long-term trend in which older, less-qualified voters living outside the big cities are drifting away from Labour. It noted that a substantial 6% swing to the Tories would lose it up to 58 more seats. A study by Onward, a think-tank close to the Conservatives, came to a similar conclusion, reckoning that around 50 more seats are within reach for the Tories. But with its vote efficiently spread around the country, it would be vulnerable to losing another 37 in more prosperous areas where Labour is making inroads. Both parties have a large number of seats with small majorities, making for a volatile next election.

One of the reasons for the Tories' triumph in Hartlepool, and a big threat to Labour, is the residual pool of votes from the Brexit Party, which stood against Labour MPs in 2019. The party has since renamed itself and fizzled from public view. In 2019 there were 37 seats where its vote-share was bigger than Labour’s majority over the Conservative Party. In Hartlepool, it polled 10,603 votes, compared with Labour’s margin of victory of 3,595. A Survation poll in Hartlepool suggests those voters were splitting 77% in favour of the Tories, and 5% to Labour. If that outcome were replicated nationally, and all other things remained unchanged, then 25 more seats would shift from Labour to the Tories (see map), including those of Mr Miliband in Doncaster North, Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, in Torfaen, and Bridget Philipson, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, in Houghton and Sunderland South.

A second reason the Tories did so well is that Mr Johnson appears to be filling the policy void left by the sealing of a Brexit deal. He won the Conservative leadership election of 2019, and then the general election that followed, by presenting himself the only solution to the Brexit impasse, and the only alternative to a government led by Mr Corbyn. Many voted Tory for the first time unenthusiastically out of fear of Labour, Onward’s research found. But simply removing Mr Corbyn and Brexit from the political stage appears to have been insufficient for a Labour recovery, and there are signs Mr Johnson is turning a short-term relationship into a long one. The Economist found voters in Hartlepool enthused by Mr Johnson’s promises to “level up” the area with increased public spending, and impressed at the record of Ben Houchen, the young Tory Mayor of Tees Valley. Voters think Mr Johnson a better candidate for prime minister than Sir Keir by 40% to 24%, according to BMG Research, a pollster. He enjoys particularly high support among Brexiteers, those with fewer qualifications, and people in the north-east.

If Mr Johnson’s result in Hartlepool is matched by similarly strong council results, it will end the muttering over his leadership. His faltering response to the pandemic, and an often-chaotic turnover of personnel in Downing Street, left Tory MPs in despair, but he will survive in office for as long as they believe he is their best chance at re-election. Labour’s hunt for those responsible, and its internal battle over the road back to power, has just begun.