Tory swing would threaten ‘red wall’

Labour “red wall” seats in the North East would be likely to fall if they saw a similar swing in votes to the Conservatives as seen in the Hartlepool byelection.

Jill Mortimer is the town’s new MP after the Conservatives won the Parliamentary by-election with a 16% swing in votes and near 7,000 majority.

The result broke Labour’s 57-year Parliamentary reign over the town, and showed a large swing to the Conservatives from the 2019 General Election.

The Tories received a 23% increase in votes, while Labour’s share dropped 9% compared to the last election.

We looked at what would happen if other seats nearby were to hold an election now, and what a similar 16% swing of votes to the Conservatives would mean for those areas.

In the 2019 General Election in South Shields Labour’s Emma Lewell-Buck won with 45.6% of the votes ahead of the Conservative candidate Oni Oviri, who picked up 20.3% of the vote.

Despite the large advantage Labour had then, a similar swing from Labour to the Conservatives in the next election would see the seat change hands.

Jarrow would also fall to the Conservatives with a 16% swing, even though last time out Labour received a 45.1% vote share compared to the Conservatives who had 27.6%.

The City of Durham, where Labour received 42% to Conservatives 31.7%, and North Durham seats, where the party had 44.2% compared to 32.9%, would also both turn blue.

Labour seats in Teesside would also fall to the Conservatives, including Stockton North, narrowly held by Labour in 2019.