Boris Johnson’s Conservatives on track to win Hartlepool by-election

Boris Johnson’s Conservatives are heading for a remarkable victory in the once solidly Labour parliamentary seat of Hartlepool, in a result expected to confirm the Tories’ advance across working class England.

Labour officials admitted the party was facing defeat in what would be a serious setback for Keir Starmer, its centrist leader, whose attempt to revive the party was in disarray.

The opposition’s expected loss in Hartlepool — a working class North East seat held by the party since the constituency was created in 1974 — was an ominous early sign for Starmer in a series of midterm votes across Britain.

Early results in council elections across England, dubbed Super Thursday, suggested Labour was in retreat across a wide front. At 6am on Friday, the party had lost a net 36 council seats and the Tories were up 36.

If the Tory victory in Hartlepool is confirmed, it would be only the third time a governing party had gained a seat in a by-election in the past 50 years. Labour claimed Johnson was enjoying a short-term “vaccine bounce”, a reference to Britain’s successful Covid-19 inoculation programme, but early results reflected longer-term trends.

A Hartlepool victory would confirm Johnson’s bond with working class English voters after he swept up support from those who previously backed the Brexit party, which won an unusually large 26 per cent of the vote in the coastal town in 2019.

Many former Labour voters who backed the Brexit party two years ago appeared to have completed their political journey and voted Tory. Labour fielded Paul Williams, a former Remain supporter, as its candidate in a town where almost 70 per cent backed Brexit in the 2016 referendum.

The expected Hartlepool defeat will be a crushing blow for Starmer. Labour is struggling to rebuild in pro-Brexit, socially conservative seats such as Hartlepool, and can no longer rely on its core working class vote.

Senior Labour officials said Starmer, a London-based lawyer and leading Remainer, has failed to set out a new agenda. He has also come under pressure to reshuffle his shadow cabinet to fend off critics.

In a sign of the vitriol heading towards the Labour leader from the party’s leftwing, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a Brighton MP, wrote on Twitter: “Good to see valueless flag waving and suit wearing working so well . . . or not?”

A Labour official conceded that the party had not sufficiently changed. “People don’t want to hear excuses. Keir has said he will take responsibility for these results — and he will take responsibility for fixing it,” the official said.

About 48m people were eligible to vote across England, Scotland and Wales, with about 5,000 positions up for grabs.

The votes were the first big test of national opinion since Johnson won the general election in 2019, with results expected through Friday and Saturday. Counting has been delayed by Covid-19 restrictions.

Elections were being held for the Scottish and Welsh parliaments, metro mayors, police and crime commissioners and local councillors.

The Conservatives were hopeful of holding on to the mayoralty in the bellwether West Midlands region and the industrial Tees Valley.

Labour’s struggles in Scotland were also expected to be laid bare, with Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National party is forecast to retain power.

Sturgeon is expected to use a victory to claim a mandate for a second independence referendum, although Johnson has been adamant that Westminster would refuse to grant a plebiscite on splitting up the UK.

Starmer, who succeeded socialist Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader in April 2020, admitted before the Hartlepool result that the party had a “mountain to climb” following its worst general election result since 1935.

Although Labour is expected to hold on to the mayoralties of London and Greater Manchester, the next 48 hours of election results are likely to confirm the daunting scale of that challenge.