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Johnson campaigns in Hartlepool. PA Images

Boris Johnson is plotting a Tory by-election raid as the UK braces for 'Super Thursday'

Voters will have their say on councils, mayors and regional parliaments across the UK.

THE ENGLISH PORT town of Hartlepool may not be somewhere you’ve thought much about before, but expect to hear a lot about as part of today’s ‘Super Thursday’ in the UK. 

The by-election for the north-eastern House of Commons seat is part of a bumper slate of elections taking place in various parts of the UK today.

With some elections delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, voters will today have their say on the make-up of English councils as well both the Scottish and Welsh parliaments.

There is no voting taking place in Northern Ireland. 

The votes elsewhere will dictate who holds power in city halls with a number of areas choosing regional mayors. London’s mayoral election is among the most high-profile, with Labour’s Sadiq Khan looking certain to be re-elected for a second-term. 

But while Labour’s prospects in the capital look good, the by-election in Hartlepool is being held up as a barometer of Keir Starmer’s leadership and a snapshot of the wider electoral map.

The reason for this is the fallout from the crushing electoral defeat for Starmer’s predecessor Jeremy Corbyn in December 2019 and the prospects for Labour to rebuild from that. 

Eighteen months ago, before Covid-19 and even before Brexit was a reality, Boris Johnson led his Conservative party to a massive majority that was built on winning previously impenetrable Labour-held seats. 

Many of these seats were in Labour’s industrial heartlands and were referred to by political pundits as its ‘Red Wall’.  

Johnson’s unambiguous ‘Get Brexit Done’ messaging won voters in these areas, many of which had themselves voted to Leave the EU three years previously. 

In total, 45 seats switched from Labour to the Conservatives in northern England and the midlands in that election. 

Hartlepool was almost one of them but it stayed in Labour’s hands by just 3,595 votes. Back in 1997, Peter Mandelson had carried the constituency by over 17,000 voters. 

The party may even have lost Hartlepool last time out were it not for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, which hoovered up a quarter of the votes that may otherwise have helped the Tories. 

Now though, with Farage out of the picture, it appears Johnson may have another blue seat in the Tory column.

The by-election has been caused by the resignation of Labour incumbent Mike Hill, who departed amid sexual harassment allegations he denies.  

PastedImage-240 PA Graphics PA Graphics

Ahead of today’s vote, the Survation poll for ITV’s Good Morning Britain put the Conservatives on 50% in Hartlepool – 17 points ahead of Labour in the seat it has held since it was created in 1974.

There was further grim reading for Labour in The Guardian, which reported that internal polling suggested only 40% of the party’s previous supporters in the town had pledged to vote for its candidate.

This canvassing matches similar polling from recent months suggesting the Conservatives have managed to consolidate support in some Red Wall areas despite a boost for Starmer in the early part of the pandemic. 

Channel 4 News recently reported that the Tories have a four-point lead across the Red Wall constituencies, having trailed Labour by six points in November 2020.  

The switch has been put down to a so-called ‘vaccine bounce’ benefitting Johnson’s party, but also the belief that his opposition has failed to imprint a lasting image of what Starmer’s party stands for. 

When voters were asked to say why they were not voting Labour, the main reason given the pollsters was: “It is unclear what Keir Starmer stands for.”

“Keir Starmer, he started off good but he sort of fizzled out, in my eyes,” one worker told Channel 4.

Channel 4 News / YouTube

Labour’s candidate in today’s by-election is Dr Paul Williams, a former MP who himself was a victim of the Tory 2019 surge, losing a seat in the nearby Stockton South.

Labour’s choice of Williams as a candidate was perhaps somewhat of a risk given his recent electoral defeat. He had also been an advocate for a second Brexit referendum and is now running in Hartlepool, which voted by nearly 70% for Brexit.

Labour has said the married father-of-two has been “working on the front line during the ongoing pandemic”, seeing coronavirus patients at Hartlepool’s One Life Centres and working in the Urgent Care Centre at Hartlepool hospital.

The Conservative candidate is farmer and councillor Jill Mortimer, who has repeatedly referenced Labour’s dominance in the constituency as part of her pitch, saying the area has been “taken for granted” by Starmer’s party. 

regional-mayoral-elections Starmer during a visit to Birmingham yesterday. PA Images PA Images

Starmer has been attempting to counter these attacks and has visited Hartlepool three times during the campaign, despite the votes happening elsewhere too. 

His message has been about “rebuilding trust” with voters but he has also sought to dampen expectations should the polls prove correct and the vote not go his way.

“We lost very badly in December 2019, and my job is to rebuild trust, and confidence and reconnection with the Labour Party and that’s what I’m doing,” Starmer told reporters this week.

That will take time, of course it will take time.

Johnson for his part has also been attempting to play down his party’s chances in Hartlepool, despite the positive-looking poll numbers. 

Campaigning yesterday, the UK Prime Minister told reporters it would be a “very tough fight” in a seat that “hasn’t been a Conservative since its inception – 46 years ago, or whatever it was”.

What else to look out for on ‘Super Thursday’?

scottish-parliamentary-elections-2021 First Minister of Scotland and leader of the SNP Nicola Sturgeon. PA Images PA Images

Scotland

Voters in Scotland will elect 129 MSPs in a crucial contest which will give an indication of the level of support for the SNP’s push for a fresh vote on independence.

People will cast two ballots under the additional member system – a form of proportional representation – electing both constituency and regional MSPs.

Votes for the individual candidates in the 73 constituencies are counted first.

The 56 regional MSPs – split across eight regions – are elected using a formula aimed at ensuring that the number of seats a party gets in total across a region is about the same as the percentage of votes it receives.

Wales

Labour has run Wales since the devolved parliament was instituted in 1999 and the party’s First Minister Mark Drakeford hopes to maintain the party’s grip on the Senedd.

The additional member system is used to elect 40 local and 20 regional members.

London and other mayoral races

In London, Labour’s Khan is looking safe to retain City Hall.

London voters choose the mayor using the supplementary vote system, picking a first and a second preference for the job.

If a candidate receives more than half of all the first choice votes they are elected. If this does not happen, the two candidates with the most first choice votes go through to another round, with second preferences from the eliminated candidates taken into account.

Khan is currently polling at about 60% so likely will not need a second round to be elected. 

There are several other regional mayoral elections taking place, with high-profile names seeking re-election including Labour’s Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester and Tory Andy Street in the West Midlands.

Local elections

There are also 21 county councils holding elections, along with 28 unitary authorities, 59 district councils and 35 of the 36 metropolitan boroughs (the one exception is Birmingham, where elections will take place in 2022). All use the first-past-the-post system.

- With reporting by Press Association

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    Mute Sean Higgins
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    May 6th 2021, 6:23 AM

    Not one mention yesterday about the 40th anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands, one of the biggest events in modern Irish history but we get to read about this instead, embarrassing……….

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    Mute Virgil
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    May 6th 2021, 9:49 AM

    @Sean Higgins: the Bobby Sands story is an old story. This is contemporary

    27
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    Mute HonestGrump
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    May 6th 2021, 11:27 AM

    @Sean Higgins: The Journal is obsessed with the UK.

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    Mute Daniel Roche
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    May 6th 2021, 7:35 AM

    Best of luck to Scotland, independence is coming.

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    Mute SPQH
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    May 6th 2021, 1:33 PM

    @Daniel Roche: The British, Irish & Scottish Lions tour 2025 has a ring to it…

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    Mute On the right side
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    May 6th 2021, 1:58 PM

    @Daniel Roche: It would be Independence for the Kingdom of England if the Scottish leave the Kingdom of Great Britain because it was the Scottish King James the 6th from the House of Stuart who inherited the English throne and became King James the !st of England as well, it was the Scottish House of Stuart that started the political Union of the 2 Kingdoms under James the 1st and it finally happened after civil wars, the abolishment of the Monarchy and restoration of the Monarchy under the rule of Queen Anne from the House of Stuarts, so it would actually mean the English would be free of the Scottish not the Scottish free of the English.

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    Mute Maurice O Neill
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    May 6th 2021, 7:45 AM

    Boris will lead the Tories for the next 10 years and they will be the ones to stand up to the EU.

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    Mute Daniel Roche
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    May 6th 2021, 8:31 AM

    @Maurice O Neill: best of luck with that my West brit friend.

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    Mute DJ François
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    May 6th 2021, 8:52 AM

    @Maurice O Neill: he’s caved on everything to the EU so far.

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    Mute David A. Murray
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    May 6th 2021, 8:54 AM

    @Maurice O Neill: Should I now officially categorise you as a ‘Troll’, or would that upset some gentle souls here. Your technique needs refinement.

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    Mute Paul Furey
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    May 6th 2021, 10:46 AM

    @Maurice O Neill: the tories have the worst bunch of negotiatiors ever. They were walked all over by the EU and every other major country / trade bloc is going to crucify them and do the same. Its hard to see any win for them with the tories in power. And what’s worse, Labour are no better. England is in serious trouble.

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    Mute Petulant mcbarity
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    May 6th 2021, 12:39 PM

    @Maurice O Neill: Good for them. Luckily we are staying within the EU so we can remain prosperous.

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    Mute Skipper Mac
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    May 6th 2021, 8:24 AM

    Stand up to the EU ?? Your out, the UK has no seat at the table, no say ! You’ve got what you wanted …. congratulations … I think.

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    Mute Edmund Murphy
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    May 6th 2021, 7:44 AM

    I’m interested in how the Welsh nationalist do. Good chance they become kingmakers. Forcing Labour to go into coalition with them was the same important step the SNP took towards legitimacy years ago and now they run Scotland and run it comparatively well.

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    Mute On the right side
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    May 6th 2021, 2:33 PM

    @Edmund Murphy: Its a bit weird that they have Welsh nationalist when it was Henry the 7th from the Welsh House of Tudor that became the King of England and it was his son Henry the 8th the made the Kingdom of Wales part of the Kingdom of England. Its the same with Scotland.

    It was the Scottish King James the 6th from the House of Stuart who inherited the English throne and became King James the !st of England as well, it was the Scottish House of Stuart that started the political Union of the 2 Kingdoms under James the 1st and it finally happened after civil wars, the abolishment of the Monarchy and restoration of the Monarchy under the rule of Queen Anne from the House of Stuarts.

    Even the Union between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Ireland was started under the other 2 houses then finally done by a German, King George the 3rd from the House of Hanover.

    Its funny because it was never a King from an English Royal House that created any of the Unions but its always the English that get the blame….lol

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    Mute Edmund Murphy
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    May 6th 2021, 5:09 PM

    @On the right side: Thank you for teaching me all that. Made me even more anti monarchy. I suppose that’s the thing, Royals rarely act in their subjects interest over their own. They see themselves as a class apart with more in common with their related pan European nobility than their serfs. I doubt it bothers them to see their subjects have their cultural history and languages beaten out of them to form a more homologous unified kingdom. A peasants just a peasant to them and I doubt thats changed much.

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    Mute Nameo Maximus
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    May 6th 2021, 7:33 AM

    Heres hoping its a big day for the Northern Independence Party in Hartlepool!

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    Mute Daniel Roche
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    May 6th 2021, 7:36 AM

    @Nameo Maximus: are you that confused.

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    Mute Nameo Maximus
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    May 6th 2021, 7:59 AM

    @Daniel Roche: About what precisely good sir?

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    Mute Daniel Roche
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    May 6th 2021, 8:32 AM

    @Nameo Maximus: everything my friend.

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    Mute Paul Shepherd
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    May 6th 2021, 12:53 PM

    @Nameo Maximus: not forgetting the Tooting Popular Front…!!

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    Mute Nameo Maximus
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    May 6th 2021, 6:59 PM

    @Paul Shepherd: Full disclosure, I’m actually secretly rooting for Nick the Incredible Flying Brick from the Monster Raving Looney Party

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