2021 Hartlepool by-election
| Date | 6 May 2021 |
|---|---|
| Description | The Tories win a seat in the post-industrial working class heartland. Labour had held this seat since 1959. |
The 2021 Hartlepool by-election was an election held on 6 May 2021 in the UK parliamentary constituency of Hartlepool following the resignation of the sitting Labour MP, Mike Hill, and alongside elections to the Borough Council, Tees Valley Mayor, and Cleveland Police and Crime Commissioner.
The Tory candidate Jill Mortimer was elected with 15,529 votes defeating Labour's Paul Williams by a majority of 6,940 votes. It comes as a blow to Sir Keir Starmer's efforts to win back support in traditional Red Wall Labour heartlands.[1]
Blog comments
Labour Heartlands commented:
It’s shameful Labour losing this seat, there is no excuse, Sir Keir Starmer’s poor choice of candidate, Paul Williams, was a recipe for failure. The Labour Party parachuted in an ‘Arch-Remainer’ to stand in ‘an overwhelmingly Labour leave voting seat and lost dramatically, who would have guessed? Well actually everyone.
No lessons have been learnt by the Labour Party, they didn’t listen then and they aren’t listing now!
It beggars belief that the Labour Party would select an Arch-Remainer in a seat that voted to leave the EU by nearly 70%.
A forgotten fact, the six seats Labour lost on 8 June 2017, every one of them was a Brexit town, a leave voting constituency.
In the disastrous UK/2019 General Election, Labour lost 54 English seats, 52 of those seats voted to leave the EU in 2016.
One of those seats taken by the Tories was held by Paul Williams’ the constituency of Stockton South. Again a local authority area that includes the constituency of Stockton-on-Tees, which voted 61.7% Leave in the 2016 EU Referendum.
Williams is an arch-Remainer he was a vocal advocate of a second Brexit referendum, while Hartlepool itself voted 69.6 per cent in favour of leaving the EU. That really did not go down well there or in the other 60% of Labour constituencies that all voted to leave the EU.[2]
Twitter comments
Owen Jones tweeted:
Responsibility for the Hartlepool catastrophe - and it is a catastrophe - belongs with the Labour leadership.
In 2015, Labour won 35.6% of the vote, less than 2019.
In 2017, Labour won 52.5%.
Even in the 2019 disaster, Labour won 37.7%.
In 2021, Labour won *28.7%*.[3]
Replying to @OwenJones84
In 2017, the Tories got 14,319 votes in Hartlepool. In 2021, they got 15,529.
In 2017, Labour got 21,969 votes. In 2021, they got 8589.
That’s not a swing to the Conservatives; that’s people not caring enough to show up.[4]
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Faiza Shaheen dropped by Labour for liking pro-BDS, Corbyn and Green Party posts | Article | 30 May 2024 | Peter Oborne | Left-wing Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen is deselected for 15 social media posts between 2014 and 2024 on issues from Islamophobia to Israeli lobbying, MEE has been informed. |
References
- ↑ "Elections 2021: Conservatives hail historic Labour defeat in Hartlepool by-election"
- ↑ "Starmer’s Labour lose Hartlepool in a humiliating defeat"
- ↑ "Responsibility for the Hartlepool catastrophe - and it is a catastrophe - belongs with the Labour leadership"
- ↑ "That’s not a swing to the Conservatives; that’s people not caring enough to show up"
This page imported content from Wikipedia on 7 May 2021.Wikipedia is not affiliated with Wikispooks. Original page source here
