BETWEEN elections to the Scottish and Welsh Parliaments, the Hartlepool by-election, mayoral races in London and elsewhere in England, and various other local ballots, Super Thursday, now just two sleeps away, is shaping up to be pretty busy.
Outwith Scotland, keep an eye on Hartlepool. Labour for generations, the party almost lost the seat in the 2019 General Election to the Tories, but the red wall of seats turning from crimson to blue could not quite stretch that far in the end.
The Conservatives have had their eyes on it since, and this time the polls are pointing to victory. In a Survation survey for Good Morning Britain, Jill Mortimer for the Conservatives was on 50% (up one point on the previous month), while Labour’s Paul Williams had slumped to 33% (down nine).
The Tories are so confident, Boris Johnson has visited the constituency three times (in contrast to the number of election visits he has paid to Scotland: precisely zero).
To read the rest of this analysis, sign up to The Herald's new political newsletter, Unspun, and get unrivalled political analysis in your inbox every day at 7pm.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel