Hartlepool Analysis-
i tell you unequivocally that a lot of fake narratives are being thrown around about the by-election - we lost partly because of a tory ticket of “time for a change” which was a hard one to argue against (1)

when you told people that the tories had been in power for 11 years you got a response of “but labour have been in here for years” a key factor here being that political education isn’t massive in the town - never has been (2)

the main reason given on doors was that people wanted change, and they felt labour couldn’t deliver it because we’d held the seat for so long and nothing had changed - this is a narrative that we’re seeing across many former red wall seats (3)

so how does labour counter this? we start by working a lot closer with local parties, giving them more control over parliamentary manifestos - they know the towns and residents better than anyone - we need to reconnect on a grassroots level (4)

this means embracing what i believe starmers grassroots strategy is - radicalism with a moderate face - because our previous strategy of pure left wing radicalism wasn’t popular with working class voters - it wasn’t believed (5)

corbyn still came up on the doors don’t let anyone tell you different - people felt let down by the previous leadership and still aren’t sure if we can be trusted (something which starmer definitely needs to work on) (6)

starmer was also mentioned a fair bit, not in a negative way but not especially in a positive way, people weren’t amazingly impressed with him which i partly put down to nature of his first year but he absolutely needs to crank it up and show himself as a viable alternative (7)

so in conclusion not all is lost - the tories will mess up their period in office, the corbyn legacy will wear off and hopefully starmer becomes a lot more lively and bold over the next few years, it’s all still to play for :) (8)