Explaining the Hartlepool Poll

Ouch. Contrary to earlier predictions, the Tories are on course to win the Hartlepool by-election. In a Survation poll for th CWU, they reported the Conservatives on 49%, Labour on 42%, the new Northern Independence Party on 2%, and the rest scratting around for one per cent apiece. Accurate constituency polls are harder to pull off than national polls thanks to smaller sample sizes and the difficulties ensuring it is representative, but ultimately it's the headline that matters.

Unfortunately, things look worse as you peer into the details. Boris Johnson has a 49% favourability rating versus just 24% for Keir Starmer. And yet, policy wise, this by-election should be uncontested territory for Labour. 67% want more spending on public services versus 24% who want deficit reduction prioritised, 57% would like to see Royal Mail renationalised, and 69% would like to see free broadband rolled out to all homes and businesses. How can we begin to account for these mind-bending findings? Hartlepool appears to want what Labour offered in 2017 and 2019 and voted for it on those occasions, but are now beguiled by a party offering towns just like them nothing but piss and wind?

There are two factors in play. The first is Boris Johnson himself. Without getting into the full details of how he is escaping accountability for 127,000 dead people, he is rare among politicians, at least as far as many punters are concerned, because he has kept his word and done what he said he would do. He promised to deliver Brexit, and through a series of shenanigans in which he nearly blew up the Tory party and sailed close to the wind of flouting the law, he did just that. On Coronavirus, despite the many failings of his government the handling of the vaccine roll out has gone swimmingly. Nearly everyone over 50 in Hartlepool will now have had at least one jab and some, as I write this, are going to be waiting their turn in the local vaccine centre for the second injection. On the two key issues of the last two years, Johnson has come good and delivered. If you don't follow politics closely and have largely been shielded from the consequences of both, what is there to be angry about?

There are, however, reasons to be dissatisfied with Labour. And these aren't the same reasons why the left aren't happy. In many places that have customarily returned Labour MPs, that they're the opposition doesn't matter. They typify distant, unappealing, and entitled establishment politics among certain layers of voters. For many millions who went Tory, they felt the party's refusal to abide by the decision of the referendum was them rubbing their noses in it, telling them they were thick and wrong and the party wasn't interested in listening. And so, this lack of interest was returned in a lack of votes. And Keir Starmer, despite his very late necessary conversion to respecting Brexit initially epitomised this arrogance by leading the charge for ignoring their referendum decision. Compounding this perception of an arrogant and out-of-touch party were the efforts to which the leader's office went to impose Paul Williams as their choice. The fact he was chosen despite voting against the Brexit decision of his former Stockton South constituents on no less than six occasions. He was and is the worst possible candidate, and the message this sends to the good people of Hartlepool is a contemptuous expectation on Labour's part that the town will vote for any old donkey in a red rosette.

The dynamic of this by-election then is a protest vote, a vote aimed against Labour as opposed to the ruinous government of the day because the party is seen to be tone deaf. Until it starts listening instead of doling out fake platitudes it thinks the ignorant proles want to hear, this won't be the last near-death experience/unnecessary defeat Labour will suffer under Keir Starmer's auspices.

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