Hartlepool by-election should be seen in long-term context.

15,529 Con votes is not that much - they used to come distant 2nd with more votes.

The real story is Labour's collapse to 8,589 votes. From 1950-2001, they consistently polled 22,000-27,000 in Hartlepool.

It looks like the kind of seat where Iraq was a real turning point in alienating traditional Labour voters.

The 2004 by-election saw the Lib Dems come within 2,033 votes of winning, and while their vote faded (7th in 2015 & 2021), a serious wedge had been driven in the Lab vote.

Since the post-2001 Labour collapse, Hartlepool has registered big votes for protest parties.

This includes the Lib Dems (2nd in 2004 & 2005), UKIP (3rd over Cons in 2004, 2nd in 2015), Brexit Party (2nd in 2019). Even the BNP held their deposit in 2010.

But 15,500 Conservative votes isn't that much of a stranglehold on a seat with >70,000 registered voters. The Tories polled more votes in the Hartlepool seats in every election from 1945-1992, yet losing 13 of those 14 elections.

On the other hand, the Labour poll is derisory - a third of what it used to regularly be. The Conservatives picked up this seat on a mediocre 15,500 vote, in a low-turnout first-past-the-post election. No credible challenger emerged, and the other parties split the vote.

This last point is ironic, as it was only the intervention of the Brexit Party candidate in 2019 which split the Conservative vote then, letting Labour win by default on an equally derisory 15,464, sparing Labour from losing the seat 18 months earlier.