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| Tuesday May 4 2021 |
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By Patrick Maguire
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Good morning,
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Hope you had a lovely Bank Holiday weekend. Why not ease yourself back into the day-to-day with a poll of Hartlepool?
Trivia question: The first London mayoral election took place on this day 21 years ago, won, of course, by Ken Livingstone. But who was the first chairman of the London Assembly elected on the same day? Answer at the bottom of today's email
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The briefing
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- What Westminster will be talking about this morning: an extraordinary Survation poll of the Hartlepool by-election that shows the Tories on course not only to win but demolish Labour with 50 per cent of the vote to 33 per cent.
- Only in Red Box this morning: two more polls of key races to depress Sir Keir Starmer. They show the Tories on course to win both the West Midlands and Tees Valley mayoralties in the first round of voting.
- But try telling this to cabinet ministers, who tell today's Times that the furore over the refurbishment of the prime minister’s flat risks becoming a “distraction” before Thursday's poll.
- Starmer appears to disagree, admitting to LBC this morning that "nobody is particularly interested in the details" of the wallpaper row, adding: "I'm well aware that in Hartlepool, we've got to earn every vote."
- As G7 foreign ministers meet in London this morning, Boris Johnson has announced £1 billion worth of trade with India in what ministers hope will be a significant step towards a fully fledged deal.
- In the House: Parliament is in recess.
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Five things you need to know this morning
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1. Total eclipse of the Hart
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It wasn't so long ago that prime ministers gave by-election campaigns a wide berth: all the better for spinning any disappointing defeat as merely a little local difficulty.
What, then, can we infer from the fact that Boris Johnson made his third visit to Hartlepool yesterday? It is not, despite subsequent attempts to dampen expectations, the behaviour of a leader who expects Thursday's contest to be a close-run thing.
To say it suggests a Tory gain is in the bag might feel bold, particularly after a week of headlines so painful for No 10. Or at least it would if new polling didn't chalk the Conservative lead up at 17 points.
A poll by Survation for Good Morning Britain – which, by happy coincidence, hosts Sir Keir Starmer this morning – has the Tories on 50 per cent, up one point from 49 per cent last month. Labour have slumped nine points to 33 per cent (its lowest share of the vote ever).
In third on six per cent: Thelma Walker, the Corbynite former MP now running under the banner of the upstart Northern Independence Party, level-pegging with independent Sam Lee.
Words of caution from ministers and No 10 on their chances on Teesside have never rung entirely true given the untypical frequency with which the PM has graced the area with his presence. Now, with just two days to go, we have a much better firmer idea as to why.
Obligatory caveats – of course there are caveats – include the health warning that, yes, constituency polling is a difficult and inexact science, and yes, Survation conducted the bulk of its fieldwork before the worst of last week's headlines (this year, however, more people than ever are expected to vote by post).
But if these numbers really were bunkum, would the prime minister be posing for so many photos so cheerfully in a constituency he thought himself at risk of losing?
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2. Street's (still) ahead
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Red Box wants some of what whoever's advising Liam Byrne on expectation management is smoking: three weeks after Labour's candidate for the West Midlands mayoralty said he'd win "easily" this Thursday, a third consecutive poll shows him miles behind Tory incumbent Andy Street.
The latest, by Opinium for the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, has Street not only winning easily – to coin a phrase – but doing so on first preference votes alone, with 54 per cent to Byrne's 37 per cent.
And it's scarcely better once for Labour those redundant second preferences are redistributed: Street extends his lead from 17 to 18 points, winning 59 per cent to 41 per cent.
Another caveat: this polling was taken before the headlines were totally subsumed by sleaze and wallpaper and national polling narrowed last week.
But it is still very much in line with the result pessimistic Labour sources are expecting, barring unforeseen turnout in their inner Birmingham strongholds.
So pessimistic are Labour officials that – according to two sources who spoke to Red Box yesterday – some staff are being redeployed from Byrne's campaign to work on the Aidrie and Shotts by-election, which you may well have forgotten is happening.
The behaviour of a party that thinks itself on course to win easily in the West Midlands? We'll see.
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3. Big Ben
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Notwithstanding the Tory wobble detected by pollsters over the weekend, you would struggle to convince Red Box that the Tories will lose the Tees Valley mayoralty.
Opinium has Ben Houchen, the region's Conservative incumbent, on course to win nearly twice the first-preference votes of Jessie-Joe Jacobs, his Labour challenger. No need for a run-off here.
And beneath the bonnet of the polling is even more data that suggests strong public support for both the incumbent and the largesse he and ministers have bestowed upon the region.
Some 48 per cent believe Houchen was right to take Teesside Airport into public ownership – just 10 per cent don't – and 63 per cent believe the Treasury's new outpost in Darlington will make a positive difference for the region.
Numbers like this, Red Box suspects – as do local Tories – can't fail to have an impact in Hartlepool.
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4. Brought to Neil
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All of that suggests it's rather a good time to a) work out what "levelling up" the hometowns of these new Conservative voters might actually mean beyond sloganeering, and b) to, you know, do it.
So enter MP Neil O'Brien, No 10's pet wonk, chairman of the Tory policy board and the bête noire of lockdown sceptics, as the PM's new adviser on making those two buzzwords a reality.
Perish the thought but there's not that long, if you're thinking in terms of shovels in the ground, before these constituencies will be asked for their verdict in another general election.
No time to waste then, Neil. At least Covid case rates are now sufficiently low that there's no need to spend all that time writing Twitter threads about lockdowns.
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5. DUP the spout
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A desire not to divide their shared Westminster flat along factional lines was part of the reason why only one of Rebecca Long-Bailey and Angela Rayner ran for the Labour leadership last year.
No such qualms in Belfast, where Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the DUP's leader at Westminster, announced his bid to succeed Arlene Foster yesterday – on Northern Ireland's 100th anniversary, no less.
That decision pits him against Edwin Poots, the Paisleyite throwback with whom he shares a constituency office. To which Belfast comic Tim McGarry quipped: "Today would be a good day to partition it."
There's an idea. Here's to the next 100 years, eh?
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The cartoon
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Today's cartoon in The Times is by Peter Schrank
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Worth your time
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- Another good read from William Hague this morning: ahead of elections that could well see a surge for separatism in both Edinburgh and Cardiff, he urges ministers to get to work on forging a common British identity sooner rather than later.
- A modest proposal from Hugo Rifkind, whose column this morning argues that ministers should resign if they break the rules. It'll never catch on.
- In case you missed it yesterday, Stephen Bush made a forceful case that Boris Johnson's best days could soon be behind him: the only thing that's not yet clear is whether Keir Starmer or a cabinet minister will reap the rewards.
- In the i, Mark Wallace argues that the biggest challenge Labour faces comes not from its right but from its left: the Greens.
- Heaps of interesting stuff in Francis Elliott's interview with a reflective Jeremy Hunt in the same paper.
- Long reads by the New Yorker's Sam Knight are always worth reading: his profile of Nicola Sturgeon, published over the weekend, is no exception. Features a particularly sinister cameo from Alex Salmond, but what's new?
- Something nuanced on the debate over a border poll in Northern Ireland, for a change, from Matthew O'Toole in the Irish Times.
- Melanie Phillips writes in praise of the judge who ruled that an autistic man should be allowed to visit sex workers.
- And in Times2, Robert Crampton warns that betting on peer pressure is a dangerous strategy for increasing vaccine uptake among the young. Just ask his wardrobe.
- On Times Radio with Matt Chorley from 10am: Finkelvitch (Daniel Finkelstein and David Aaronovitch) pick over the news (10.30am); The Big Thing: Times Radio focus group with SNP voters unsure about independence (11am); coffee break with Mariella Frostrup (11.35am); The London problem (11.40am); India crisis (11.50am); Midday Update - your indispensable half hour bulletin; breast milk jewellery (12.35pm); If I had A Day Off: Jonathan Gullis(12.40pm) Quiz: Can You Get To Number 10? (12.50pm).
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Mixed views on Boris Johnson's phone number in Thursday's poll: 50 per cent of you said yes, he should change it – Red Box is pretty sure that call's now been heeded – while 36 per cent said it was a bit late for such questions now. Respect to the 10 of you who picked: "Can I have it?"
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Today's trivia answer
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Trivia question: The first London mayoral election took place on this day 21 years ago, won, of course, by Ken Livingstone. But who was the first chairman of the London Assembly elected on the same day?
Answer: Times columnist Trevor Phillips.
Send your trivia to redbox@thetimes.co.uk
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