Our first constituency poll has awful news for Britain’s Conservatives

One reason a region containing just 1% of Britain’s people gets so much notice is what happened in Hartlepool, a former shipbuilding town fallen on hard times, in May 2021. After the Labour mp suddenly resigned, the Conservative Party managed to snatch the seat—a rare case of a governing party doing better in a by-election than it had in the previous general election. Sir Keir Starmer, Labour’s leader, considered resigning. That turned out to be the high-water mark for Tory fortunes.