Labour Hartlepool candidate to ‘double efforts’ to win byelection
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Labour’s candidate in the keenly-anticipated Hartlepool byelection said he would “double his efforts” after a poll suggested the party was heading for a historic defeat in the town.
The Survation poll, commissioned by the Communication Workers Union, put the Conservatives seven points ahead of Labour with one month until polling day.
Worryingly for Labour, the survey of 502 voters suggested Boris Johnson was twice as popular in Hartlepool than Keir Starmer, the leader who was meant to rebuild the party’s “red wall” and reconnect with its traditional voters.
Labour has held the town since 1964, but its share of the vote has ebbed away in recent years to leave a majority of just over 3,500. The Conservatives were on course to take the seat in 2019, but the Brexit party won 26% of the vote allowing Labour to cling on.
Dr Paul Williams, Labour’s candidate in the byelection, said he believed victory was still possible despite the disappointing poll: “Obviously you prefer to be ahead in polls but actually it showed that of the 502 people they interviewed, 200 hadn’t yet decided [who to vote for] and that’s what is chiming with us on the doorstep.”
He added: “The issues are all there – the local hospital, jobs, crime – but people haven’t decided which candidate has the solutions. I think what [the poll] has done for me is it’s made me want to double my efforts to get my message out there.”
A Labour defeat would increase pressure on Starmer, whom critics say has failed to make significant inroads with the voters who deserted the party over Brexit and Jeremy Corbyn.
Starmer and the prime minister both visited Hartlepool last week, revealing how seriously each party is taking the vote on 6 May.
Williams, an NHS doctor whose wife runs a Covid vaccination clinic in Hartlepool, said Starmer was “thriving” when talking to voters, but that his ability to tour the country last year had been constrained by the pandemic.
The Survation poll, carried out between 29 March and 3 April, suggested the Conservative party candidate Jill Mortimer would win 49% of the vote to Labour’s 42%, though that does not include 200 voters who were undecided or declined to answer.
The survey said 49% of voters felt favourably towards Johnson, compared with 24% for Starmer.
Williams was the Labour MP for neighbouring Stockton South for two years before he was unseated during the Conservative landslide of 2019.
He conceded that Labour “hadn’t always got it right” but said the party was “under new management” nationally and in the town itself, where the Hartlepool branch has been torn apart by infighting in recent years.
Voters, he said, would “see through” the Conservatives on election day: “When you ask people what have the Tories done for Hartlepool, they’re not able to name a thing. The Tories have been in power for the last 11 years. They’ve just seen services ebb away. I think people will see through the Tories here.”
Dr Jonathan Hopkin, a professor of comparative politics at the London School of Economics, said the Conservatives were “almost certainly” going to win the seat this time.
He said: “The Labour party needs to move beyond a base of urban professionals and generation-renters. It has to appeal to the kind of voters that, sadly, bought the Brexit lies and who quite like Boris Johnson.”