All of us know what an earth shattering result this must be for Labour. I never though I’d see a Tory MP in the town and I’m not alone in that. The donkey with the red rosette has been sent to the glue factory.

It seems that the result is replicated widely making this not just a bye election anomaly but a national trend. So what does this mean for Labour’s future? My view is that Corbyn fatally damaged Labour and short of getting Dianne Abbot to do the vote counting, they will never come back.

Does anyone have a more positive view?

not really. do not think corbyn should get the full blame however. my support of the labour party went under tony blair like a lot of others did. the actual policies that corbyn set out at the last general election would have succeeded more if someone else rather than him put them out. he was tainted and the press made so much of it. labour has been out of power for longer periods but need someone with a big character to bring them back now. starmer has proved not to be the answer by a long way. the old labour party is dead now and there only future chance is someone more trustable than blair to deliver policies like he did. in other words you might just carry on voting tory or join the abstain party with me.

Mandelson made a great point on R4 this morning following an interview with John o Connell.

Labour results: LLLL Blair, Blair, Blair. LLLL

To me it's not so much what the Labour party do now as what the Tories produce, people in the town remember that when Blair and Labour were in power the erosion of the towns services started and continued, hospital, law courts, police cells etc. If the Tories don't do anything to reverse that trend and help to improve people's work opportunities it will automatically go back to Labour next time, regardless of who the individuals concerned are.

The Metropolitan Labour Party doesn't represent the working man so why should it receive their vote. Kier Starmer is the Labour equivalent of the grey John Major. He might be a decent man but excites nobody. Even with 127,000 deaths they can't hold on to Hartlepool. There is little chance of a Labour revival anytime soon. They need to shift a generation and appoint a leader who does have passion. The question is really do they shift towards a Momentum position or take the central ground as Blair did.

Before the last general election, I warned everyone that the labour party was making itself unelectable and that the Tories faced very little electable opposition and so it has turned out. I was called everything from a pig to a dog.
So I'm going to say it........I TOLD YOU SO.

As for Mr I's question. The Labour Party is split virtually down the middle. They can't agree with each other and the electorate have sensed that. To solve the problem the right of the party has to compromise and so does the left, thus uniting on some sort of middle ground, with everybody buying into the idea. Then, and only then, they just might have a chance of recovery. I doubt the hard liners will go for that so we will continue to have the Tories in power until an electable alternative is established. We could be in for a long wait.

Mandelson (and Blair) should keep their mouths shut - but of course they won't. Metropolitan Mandy parachuting into Labour's safe seat in Hartlepool - and airlifting out again to be an EU grandee - was the beginning of the end for Labour in the town. Maybe somebody else knows what he did specifically for his constituents during his time as MP other than being the butt of the guacamole/mushy peas joke?

funny how the right wingers in the tory party never get the adverse publicity that those on the left of labour always do. why do labour MP,s really have to speak as one to get their party elected where the tories too have a broad opinion of views. labour has the same problem as the tories had after thatcher. at the moment they have not got a natural and strong leader of the party.

Also the important fact that town babies are now born out of town quite galls the electorate, picture in 50 years time locals saying I was born in Stockton, Middlesbrough, Sunderland, Durham etc, that birthright link with the town will have completely evaporated.

that does not sound that important looking at all the rest of the problems in and around the town. but more you think about it the more important it is especially for a family with a long history living in the town.

I'm interested to see what she does about our ridiculous property rates in the town, I live in 3 bedroom detached house ( no swimming pool or acres of land ) and now pay over £3,000 a year in rates and can't even get my brown bin emptied over half the year and then only once a month. GRRRRRRR!!! I intent to email her with this question ( about the rates )

42% turnout is shocking considering all the publicity.
The tories put up the most inappropiate candidate with no policies and no real campaign and won by a mile.
Perhaps the following had an influence.

Disillusionment with politics in general and a desire to change in some way
Corbyn legacy
The behaviour of the last labour majority council
Pro EU labour candidate
London centric labour party
Lets give the tories a try and see what they will give us until the next election
Angus didnt stand

doubt she,ll be able to help you. its the system thats at fault with the bands properties go into. that needs changing to give you a fighting chance. there never seemed to be problems pre poll tax like there is now. always remember though it could get worse if spend, spend,spend labour get in power with no visable extra services provided.

Hopefully she will get Rishi to frig the funding formula so Hartlepool get the money it needs to fund services properly.

£3,000 a year ? Average rates are £1,500 down here ,posh band is £ 2,100 .You sure you haven't got any stables out the back?

Not anymore!

I'm interested to see what she does about our ridiculous property rates in the town, I live in 3 bedroom detached house ( no swimming pool or acres of land ) and now pay over £3,000 a year in rates and can't even get my brown bin emptied over half the year and then only once a month. GRRRRRRR!!! I intent to email her with this question ( about the rates )

Figures for Rates are;
Band A 1131
Band B 1319
Band C 1508
Band D 1696
Band E 2073
Band F 2450
Band G 2827
Band H 3393

Not sure where your £3000+ come from as there are only c90 properties in Bands G & H?

Bill for 2021/22
Increase from
2020/21 (%)
Hartlepool B.C. 2307.59 0.0
H B C Adult Social Care 221.65 0.0
Greatham Parish 6.82 0.1
Cleveland Fire 116.03 1.9
Cleveland Police & C.C. 383.83 2.0
Total Amount of Council Tax 3035.92 0.3
The Council has set the above Council Tax for the Financial year ending 31
st March 2022. Details of
the amount due from you are shown below.
Charge For Period Band F 01-Apr-21 31-Mar-22 3035.92
The Council Tax attributable to Hartlepool Borough Council includes a precept to fund Adult Social
Care.
AMOUNT DUE FROM YOU
£3035.92
Reason For Bill: Annual
PAYMENT INSTRUCTIONS

I don't know where you get your figures from but here's my council tax bill.

In defence of Hartleblue a castle rarely has a swimming pool or acres of land so I expect Mortimer soon to be on the case for him to be rates exempt. Like many on here we only talk in thousands and to mention hundreds is considered vulgar.

Do they all have swimming pools?

Google Hartlepool B. C. - Council Tax / Rates

Council Tax Band

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

2020/21 1393.58 1625.85 1858.11 2090.38 2554.91 3019.45 3483.96 4180.76
2021/22 1398.04 1631.06 1864.05 2097.07 2563.08 3029.10 3495.11 4194.14
NB If you live in an area of a Parish Council you may be required to pay an additional amount.

The Valuation Office values every domestic property. Each dwelling has been put into one of eight bands according to its market value on the 1st April 1991. To determine the right band for your home they take into account the size, age, character and the locality of the property and information about what similar properties sold for on 1 April 1991. Your property band was not calculated by the council, but by an officer of the H M Revenues and Customs known as 'The Listing Officer'. All appeals or enquiries can be made to the Valuation Office Agency Tel: 03000 501501, www.voa.gov.uk.

Sold the castle and sacked Mortimer as I'm a pensioner now and can't afford a cleaner even.

Isn't your helicopter pad busier than Teesside Airport?

It was when Boris was here!

Only half a job there Mr Critical

Respect to Sam Lee - great result. Would have been interesting if she had stood for Labour............

How long before Boris moves in on the London Reds councils mr i ?

I see Khan is struggling a bit tonight. I'd give up the victory in the Hartlepool election to see him lose.

just because someone lives in a higher rated property does not mean they have the extra money to pay the rates bill. might have purchased it years and years back when it cost even less than a terraced house does now. there is no guarentee the house is paid for if the person kept re mortgaging the thing.

The Conservatives have made much of the so called "Levelling up Agenda"so lets see this spelt out in precise, specific and measurable terms using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) comparing Hartlepool with the national average to see how much progress is made by the next election.
These KPIs could cover the items such as Income, (un)employment, education,skills,health,crime,housing and environment.
Given this levelling up promise the government have to be held to account,unfortunately the history so far is just of vague promises, bluster and bullshit.

The origins and support for Labour has roots in the down trodden working classes, mainly blue collar. More and more modern jobs, many resulting resulting from IT, are white collar jobs and just like those doing clerical jobs down south, such workers consider themselves middle class. As this trend continues with fewer workers doing 'Proper jobs' as my parents used to say, the Labour Party will continue to decline until they realise that expelling the extreme left party members is the way to realign in keeping with the modern working class.
However much one dislikes Tony Blair, his three election victories should tell the lefties that that is the way to power. Unfortunately those on the left would rather moan on the sidelines if they cannot get the socialism they want.

PS I am a former Labour Party member

I am a current Labour Party member and I agree with every word of that.

Thought this thread mite of brought Horden back.
Hope he's doin ok.
Miss his opinions n crack.

Thank you Derwent.

BTW I miss Horden too.

a lot of the new age working class think they are middle class because they have bought or buying their house. know a few who have moved to the tories after doing that. why do you think thatcher was all for home ownership.

There is a realisation amongst people in their twenties that there is nothing to be gained by supporting Labour. At school and in University they are bombarded with left wing ideals but soon realise that ideals don't give them the material things that they have been brought up to expect. Their expectations are far higher and broader than ours were at that age.
Working class was a badge that was proudly worn, now it is a stigma.
If Conservatism is to be seriously challenged then a new centrist party has to be created but, having said that, the Tories appear to have grasped hold of the centre ground and the electorate have taken to it. Whether the Tories can keep looking a bit more compassionate is another thing entirely. They could self destruct if their collective eye is taken off the ball.
Having no effective opposition is very dangerous but it is difficult to determine where any sort of effective opposition is emerging from.
Too many people in the Labour party seem to prefer the old working class roots ideal but that ideal is divisive and archaic. They have to gain a much wider appeal if they are to be trusted by the electorate.

Come on them Mr Critical where did you get your incorrect figures from?

remember when i was about 21 and being a real left wing labour supporter. was playing hockey back then and somehow got into politics with a large factory owner who played for us. always remember his words that the older i,ll get the less left wing i,d be because of different family circumstances. never heard a truer statement. funny though how the labour vote seems to have stood up better in greater london and down south than it has up the north. will they for some reason become the new red wall.

There are various reason given for why the Labour vote stands up in London but it is not acceptable to quote some of them. Suffice to say that Labour support is more prevailant in the major cities, especially in the so called inner city areas.

yes, the same reason why west yorkshire voted in a labour mayor. the one we dare not speak their name.

Yep. And now you are on track to start to reveal the true reason why mining, shipbuilding and other great manufacturing areas, natural Labour Supporters, have turned against the Party. I shall say no more.

To be fair Mr Accrington Labour stands up in the metro areas because Labour pander to the woke ultra left agenda. It is no longer a political party, its a protest group for civil servants, teachers and student unions along with university lecturers.

The left believe that the political world is still in the 1920's, it ain't. The days of 'I'm a poor working class, shit on your shoe Sir... cap doffed several times' are over. The industrial revolution was two centuries ago and the working condition issues are long since overcome. Most people believe themselves upwardly mobile or at least that their kids have a chance of being so. Consequently they are more sympathetic to the Conservatives because the party preaches opportunity.

I genuinely believe that the Labour Party is both irrelevant and history. I don't see how it can ever come back from the drubbing it had last week and in 2019. Even the much heralded 2017 (lost but claimed a victory by not being whitewashed) election needs looking at in detail. Theresa May didn't even bother campaigning. She was the most boring and personality free politician in living memory yet she still won.

Labour in losing the North and Scotland has lost any chance of holding power ever again. What happened last week in Hartlepool was part of the upslope not the peak of Tory rule. When Labour lose to the Tories in their spiritual home of Durham then you know its over surely.

I see no opposition to Boris for the next ten years. The only thing that can stop him is the possibility of him losing enthusiasm. Should that happen then there will be someone else ready to take over and by then, Labour will be a rumour in the history books.

Totally agree MR I - other than the ten year point - I believe that a replacement centre ground movement will appear - to fill the space which has been failed by the LibDems and cannot be filled by the Greens until their agenda matures and widens.

I don’t disagree with that Mr BHLF. Only Blair broke the streak of Labour losing every election since Wilson and they hate him for being a centrist more than they do for Iraq!

Maybe a new SDP will arise from the ashes. It was only the fluke of the Falklands War that stopped them being a major electoral force last time. Trouble is that Boris has the sort of policies that would have been considered left wing not too long ago so where do they place themselves? I don’t claim a Monopoly on wisdom so I assume there are those in the Labour Party having the same conversations.

At the weekend the Observer/Guardian columnist Will Hutton - a dyed in the wool Blairite if ever there was one - wrote an article with the title "Houchenism."

I read it hoping it might be an article extolling the diving header, but no, it was in praise of the Tees Valley mayor and how he has ripped up the political rulebook of the last 30-odd years. As we know up here, Ben has combined nationalisation (Tees Valley airport) with an ultra free market initiative like Tees Port, and persuaded his bitch Boris to move a chunk of the Treasury up to the Tees Valley into the bargain. Hutton pointed to Houchen's 70% vote in the mayoral election and the Tory win in Hartlepool as evidence of the power of this new brand of whatever-it-takes interventionism.

Other Guardian columnists have been offering Labour solutions to the election setbacks, with the ones not in favour of lynching Corbyn (or Starmer) talking about a renewed focus on social justice, the environment, care for the most vulnerable etc. The problem is, there's not a lot of evidence that the electorate is ever going to be altruistic enough to vote that agenda into power.

Keith is Ben H's uncle, by the way.

Agreed Kev,but Labour keep letting him down..all the best mr horden,your opinion counts on Labour's crushing defeats .

[quote="Mr Irrelevant"]To be fair Mr Accrington Labour stands up in the metro areas because Labour pander to the woke ultra left agenda. It is no longer a political party, its a protest group for civil servants, teachers and student unions along with university lecturers.



I genuinely believe that the Labour Party is both irrelevant and history. I don't see how it can ever come back from the drubbing it had last week and in 2019. Even the much heralded 2017 (lost but claimed a victory by not being whitewashed) election needs looking at in detail. Theresa May didn't even bother campaigning. She was the most boring and personality free politician in living memory yet she still won.

not sure if labour is quite dead just yet. can see similarities with the tory party before and after the 1997 general election when they got a drubbing in some of their homelands. they lost their way and came back via the lib/con pact. might not have come back then without the world recession and the iraq weapons of mass destruction by blair. labour need quickly to realise that majorites get you elected. not pandering to every single minorities in this country that only cause the majority to look elsewhere. this is whats happened where the ordinary voter is not interested in their woke agendas and being told what to do and think. time they listened and do what their voters really want and how they think. arrogance has no place in the labour party.

Labour will not come back to win a Govt as England is very nationalistic now. That was encouraged by the Scots independence vote in 2014. English people reacted, UKIP got themselves a clever leader and the 'working classes ' in England deserted Labour. In Scotland you had a nationalist agenda allied to a party with socialist principles and hey presto the SNP are successful .

think britain as a whole has always been nationalistic. its never been just the toffs down south in their mansions who love to fly the flag. plenty folk with sod all do the same thing. if the falkland conflict happens today i doubt peoples reactions would be much different as back in those days. the woke minorities are smaller in proportion to the rest of the population by a long way but get heard the most.

Sandals with nice pensions,Champagne Socialist's..Woke needs to wake up about this mr i