Elections 2022: Where are the key North East contests?

Last year's local elections were bruising ones for Labour in the north-east of England.

Just 18 months after suffering a series of defeats in the general election, the party struggled again in what it considered its heartland.

They lost the Hartlepool parliamentary by-election to the Conservatives and were swept out of power in County Durham for the first time in a century.

It also left them on the brink in Sunderland. The net loss of nine seats left the party contemplating the potential loss of another council this year.

Twelve months on though and Labour will be hoping they can at least stop the rot, and even begin to rebuild.

They clearly remain concerned though. Party leader Keir Starmer has already visited Sunderland twice in the early stages of campaigning.

The party only has to lose another four councillors to see its majority in the council chamber wiped out, and even though only a third of seats are up for grabs, it's a perilous position.

The party will hope that the voters give them credit for finally delivering some of the promised regeneration, not least on the city's former Vaux Brewery site, but they will be nervous.

Leader Graeme Miller faces a particularly tough contest in a Washington South ward where a colleague was beaten by the Conservatives in 2021.

They will though be reassured by the lower national poll ratings for Conservatives in 2022, and hope concerns over cost of living and residual anger about Downing Street parties play into their hands.

But even if the Conservative threat is diminished, they still face a strong challenge from the Liberal Democrats.

The party has built an effective bridgehead into Labour territory in recent elections in the city and will be looking to do so again. The Green Party are also seeking a way back on to the council.

Labour also has some rebuilding to do in Hartlepool. The loss of the parliamentary seat might have stolen the headlines last year, but the party also failed to regain its hold on the council.

It's now run by a partnership of Independents and Conservatives, but Labour is pushing hard to change that.

They will hope that a year on they can do enough to show the party has not been entirely eclipsed in a constituency it needs to win back at the next general election.

It will be an important test of whether voters there - who voted strongly to leave the European Union in 2016's referendum - have moved on from any suspicion that Labour was not listening to them.

Hartlepool's politics are always complicated and idiosyncratic though, so results are hard to call.

In Newcastle, Labour will feel confident of retaining a strong grip on the council, but they will emerge without long-time leader Nick Forbes, who decided to stand down after not being selected to fight the ward he'd represented for two decades.

The Labour group has chosen Nick Kemp as his successor as group leader, though his leadership of the council will need to be confirmed post-election.

Open wounds remain though, with former deputy leader Joyce McCarty suspended by the party after she claimed Mr Forbes had been ousted by "a Muslim Plot".

Whether that will lead to any political advantage for the Liberal Democrat opposition remains to be seen, while the Conservatives will be making yet another attempt to gain a seat back on a council the party last had a presence on in 1996.

Labour's grip on Gateshead and North and South Tyneside seems unlikely to be loosened too, though there will be attempts by Liberal Democrats, Conservatives, Greens and Independents to chip away at their dominance.

Perhaps then this won't be a repeat of Labour's 2021 struggles in the region, but they will want to see signs in Sunderland and Hartlepool in particular, that they are winning back voters who had drifted away.

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