Tory win in Hartlepool provides setback for Labour

The rickety folding tables looked like they could hardly cope with the weight of votes for the Tory candidate, and now elected MP, Jill Mortimer, in Hartlepool.

The result: more evidence for the Conservatives that they are digging further and further into territory where once they were total outsiders.

They didn't just win here, they romped home.

Hartlepool, as it's constituted now, has never had a Tory MP. It's also unusual that governments win by-elections - they are often moments when voters remind the administration of the day who is really in charge.

Not this time.

Boris Johnson's party has also scooped up council seats in places like Harlow and Nuneaton, with swings - at what is still, remember, an early stage - that give the impression the Tories really are consolidating their dominance in England.

Despite a bumpy few weeks, it's a reminder for the Tory party of Mr Johnson's record as an election winner.

The Hartlepool result is not a surprise for Labour. And it's important to remember that about 10,000 people voted for the Brexit Party in 2019 there, and at an early glance it seemed many of those voters switched across to the Tories.

But that doesn't mean it's not a setback. The result is more evidence of the long term shift in politics where areas that had chosen Labour for decades were less and less convinced.

That didn't start with Boris Johnson and didn't even start with Brexit.

The success of the vaccine programme has no doubt helped the Tories too.

But Keir Starmer has questions to answer as well, even if results for his party in places like Trafford or Crawley come good in the long results process in the coming days. Why was a strong Remain candidate chosen for a seat were voters were massively in favour of leaving the EU?

Would the party have been wiser to choose to hold the by-election on a different day to the Britain-wide ballots?

But beyond the local circumstances, even some of his allies would admit privately, the leadership has struggled to come up with a really compelling message that can grab voters, that magic ingredient that turns competent politicians into winners.

There'll be likely strife from the left in the next few days - several MPs, including Diane Abbott and Richard Burgon, front benchers under Jeremy Corbyn, already tweeting calls for a change in direction. One former member of the NEC this morning has even told me that the leader has to go.

But if anything, expect Starmer's team to make the case more aggressively that the party needs to change. Don't be surprised if there is a reshuffle, and a punchier approach to his critics on the left on the other side.

Remember in all this however, we are in the early hours of a complicated and extensive set of elections. A lot still could change.