Congratulations have been flooding in to Jill Mortimer after she won the Hartlepool seat.

It is the first time a Conservative has gained the seat since the constituency was created in its current form in 1974, and the first woman MP to represent the town.

Defence Secretary Ben Wallace tweeted congratulations, and said "fashionable left elites" were paying the price.

Northumberland is a "funny place" according to the council leader, and he was not talking about the election count, where for the second time running dead heats had to be decided by a draw.

Speaking after the Conservatives took overall control, with a majority of one, Glen Sanderson so described the area because it "tends not to follow national trends".

However, in this case, it did - with the Tories gaining seats, as they have in many places elsewhere.

In Northumberland's case he put it down to the council's record in doing "important, every day stuff".

He said: "I think it's because people realise in troubled times we've shown leadership, we've shown courage and our staff have worked fantastically well providing frontline services.

"I think our record speaks for itself, and that's the reason."

As local election votes were counted on Thursday evening, it emerged rivals have put plans in motion to try to replace the Labour party's figurehead, Nick Forbes.

Byker councillor Nick Kemp, who quit the council’s cabinet last summer in a split from Labour’s leaders, confirmed he is putting himself forward to become leader.

it will be decided at the Labour group’s annual general meeting on Monday evening.

Mr Forbes (pictured) said: “I have both a strong track record of delivery and ambitious ideas for the future to put to the Labour group.”

Mr Kemp has sat on the council since 2002 and had previously had responsibility for issues such as trading standards and bin collections in his role as cabinet member for environmental and regulatory services.

Daniel Holland
Local Democracy Reporter

Labour lost two seats in Newcastle and council leader Nick Forbes is to face a leadership challenge next Monday from one of his former cabinet members, Nick Kemp.

The city’s ruling party, which still boasts a heavy majority on the council, saw two seats in the outer west of Newcastle fall to the Newcastle Independents party.

Labour manage to hold off challenges from the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives’ long run without an election win in Newcastle continued.

The Green Party’s hopes of securing a first seat on the city council were also dashed

There were 28 seats up for grabs - 18 were held by Labour, six held by the Lib Dems, two won by the Newcastle Independents, and two held by independents.

The overall political makeup of the council is now: Labour 52, Lib Dem 20, three Newcastle Independents and three independents.

If you're just joining us, good morning and here is a round-up of what has happened so far:

• The Conservatives won the Hartlepool by-election with Jill Mortimer (pictured below) named as the town's new MP
• Labour had held the seat since the current constituency was created in 1974
• Ms Mortimer won with 15,529 votes, while Labour's Mr Williams received 8,589
• The Conservatives also took control of Northumberland County Council with a majority of one seat
• Labour kept control of Newcastle, Sunderland, Gateshead and South Tyneside Councils but with some losses
• Results still to come are the Northumbria and Cleveland police and crime commissioners (PCC), Tees Valley Mayor and North Tyneside Council later today.
• Durham County Council, Hartlepool Council Durham PCC and North Tyneside mayor are expected on Saturday and Cumbria PCC on Monday

Image source, PA Media

Hartlepool confirms Johnson as a 'vote winner'published at 09:26 British Summer Time 7 May 2021

09:26 BST 7 May 2021

Laura Kuenssberg
Political editor

The rickety folding tables looked like they could hardly cope with the weight of votes for the Tory's candidate, and now elected MP Jill Mortimer, in Hartlepool.

The result: more evidence for the Conservatives that they are digging further and further into territory where once they were total outsiders.

They didn't just win here, they romped home.

Hartlepool, as it's constituted now, has never had a Tory MP. It's also unusual that governments win by-elections - they are often moments when voters remind the administration of the day who is really in charge.

Not this time.

Boris Johnson's party has also scooped up council seats in places like Harlow and Nuneaton, with swings - at what is still, remember, an early stage - that give the impression the Tories really are consolidating their dominance in England.

Despite a bumpy few weeks, it's a reminder for the Tory party of Mr Johnson's record as an election winner.

The Hartlepool result is not a surprise for Labour. And it's important to remember that about 10,000 people voted for the Brexit Party in 2019 there, and at an early glance it seemed many of those voters switched across to the Tories.

But that doesn't mean it's not a setback. The result is more evidence of the long term shift in politics where areas that had chosen Labour for decades were less and less convinced.

Read Laura's blog in full here.

Here's the full breakdown of results in Hartlepool - there were 16 candidates:

• David Bettney, Social Democratic Party - 104

• The Incredible Flying Brick, The Official Monster Raving Loony Party -108

• Hilton Dawson, The North East Party - 163
• Gemma Evans, Women's Equality Party - 140
• Rachel Sara Featherstone, The Green Party - 358
• Adam Gaines, Independent - 126
• Andrew Michael Hagon, Liberal Democrat - 349
• Steve Jack, Freedom Alliance, No Lockdowns, No Curfews - 72
• Chris Killick - 248
• Sam Lee, Independent - 2,904
• Claire Martin, Heritage Party - 468
• Jill Mortimer, Conservative Party - 15,529
• John Prescott, Reform UK - 368
• Thelma Doris Walker, Independent - 250
• W. Ralph Ward-Jackson, Independent - 157
• Paul Daniel Williams, Labour Party - 8,589

What does Hartlepool result mean for the parties?published at 08:34 British Summer Time 7 May 2021

08:34 BST 7 May 2021

Richard Moss
Political editor, North East & Cumbria

Governments gaining opposition seats in by-elections is not supposed to happen.

But the Conservatives have done just that in Hartlepool, and handsomely.

Labour says this was a battle that came too soon in Keir Starmer’s push to rebuild support.

And it is true that the Tories would probably have won Hartlepool in the 2019 general election, had the Brexit Party not picked up a quarter of the votes.

The movement of that support to Conservative candidate Jill Mortimer does seem to have been crucial to this win. Add to that a vaccine bounce, and Labour says it was always likely to come off second-best.

That will not stop questions though about why Labour continues to lose in constituencies it used to count on, whether the party is heading in the right direction, and Keir Starmer’s appeal to voters in northern towns.

Many of those questions could come from within his own party.

Not only from the Left, but also from Northern MPs who will be wondering if 2019 really was the party’s low point, and whether any seats in the party’s supposed heartlands are truly safe anymore.

For the Conservatives, there are different questions.

Once the celebrations are over, they will have to make good on campaign promises to bring jobs and investment to a community they now represent at Westminster.

They have pinned the blame for high levels of unemployment and poverty on Labour. Now they need to show that backing a Tory really does make a difference to people’s lives and not just the political landscape.

Local Democracy Reporting Service
Chris Binding

Labour has kept control of South Tyneside Council.

The party lost four seats but easily retained control, taking 16 out of the 20 seats which were contested across the borough.

Now the council’s overall make-up is 44 Labour councillors, five independents, three Greens, one Conservative and Jeff Milburn who is listed on the council’s website as an Independent Conservative.

The council's leader Tracey Dixon, who retained her seat in Whitburn and Marsden with 1,337 votes, said she was “slightly disappointed” with the result.

She said: “We were hoping that we would retain 20 Labour councillors but unfortunately we have lost four seats and that isn’t for the want of the candidates trying, it’s been a very difficult year for this year’s election."

Labour's Paul Williams - who lost the Hartlepool by-election to the Conservatives - has tweeted his thanks to his supporters.

It's the first time in more than 50 years that the Tories have taken the seat.

Curtice: Swing to Tories in Hartlepool not just about Brexitpublished at 08:31 British Summer Time 7 May 2021

08:31 BST 7 May 2021

Labour's loss of the Hartlepool by-election is the most dramatic illustration yet that the party has so far failed to connect with the Leave/working class voters that, the party lost heavily in 2017 and 2019.

Support for the Brexit Party, which registered 26% in 2019, collapsed - the successor Reform party secured just 1% of the vote. It looks as though the Conservatives picked up the Brexit Party's former support, in line with the proportion of Leave voters preferring the Conservatives to Labour to the order of 3/4 to 1.

However, the swing to the Conservatives of 16% is more than can be accounted for by the collapse of the Brexit Party.

Labour's vote fell 9 points to 29%, so the party clearly lost some of its 2019 support, as well as suffering from the movement of Brexit Party voters to the Conservatives. Part of the explanation may lie in the success of independent candidate, Sam Lee, who won 10% of the vote.

Together with the pattern in key wards, there is clearly a debate about whether Labour can win support from Leave voters by ignoring Brexit as it has in the last 12 months.

Hartlepool by-election winner Conservative Jill Mortimer hailed her victory as a "truly historic" result, and pledged to "work tirelessly" for the town.

She said people in the town have "had enough" of Labour, and had "made it clear it's time for a change".

Labour's Diane Abbott has called on party leader Sir Keir Starmer to rethink his strategy, following the 'crushing defeat' in Hartlepool.

Abbott was Labour's shadow home secretary under Jeremy Corbyn.

Reaction to Labour's defeat in Hartlepool is coming in now from the left of the Labour Party.

Momentum, the campaign group set up to support Jeremy Corbyn's leadership, has called it a "disaster".

The group's co-chair Andrew Scattergood said: "[Keir] Starmer's strategy of isolating the left and replacing meaningful policy with empty buzzwords has comprehensively failed."

And Labour MP Richard Burgon, who chairs the party's Socialist Campaign Group, says the party is "going backwards in areas we need to be winning" and the leadership "needs to urgently change direction".

"It should start by championing the popular policies in our recent manifestos," he adds.

Massive Tory win in Hartlepool 'an earthquake' for Labourpublished at 08:28 British Summer Time 7 May 2021

08:28 BST 7 May 2021

Chris Mason
Political Correspondent

This is an earthquake.

This morning, for the first time in 56 years, people in Hartlepool are waking up to a Conservative MP.

This is a huge majority for the Tories - a 16% swing from Labour to Conservative - with Jill Mortimer winning by a country mile.

There is a curiosity here: the Conservatives acting as insurgents, kicking Labour as the establishment, despite the fact the Conservatives have been in government for over a decade in Westminster.

The result won't change the maths at Westminster, but it will change the mood.

Recriminations are already beginning in the Labour party. Some - those loyal to Jeremy Corbyn - have been itching to be able to criticise Sir Keir Starmer - this result will give them plenty of opportunity to do that.

The Conservative Party Co-Chairman, Amanda Milling has responded to the Hartlepool result.

She said: “This is a historic result.

“We’re delighted that the people of Hartlepool have put their faith in Jill and the Conservatives to deliver on their priorities: to bring the change, investment and jobs Hartlepool deserves.

“The work to repay that faith starts right now, as we continue with our agenda to level up and build back better from the pandemic.

“I want to pay tribute to Jill Mortimer who will be a fantastic MP and will work tirelessly for the people of Hartlepool.

“And I want to thank the voters of Hartlepool who have put their trust in us to deliver on their priorities”

Here's the full breakdown of results in Hartlepool - there were 16 candidates:

• David Bettney, Social Democratic Party - 104

• The Incredible Flying Brick, The Official Monster Raving Loony Party -108

• Hilton Dawson, The North East Party - 163
• Gemma Evans, Women's Equality Party - 140
• Rachel Sara Featherstone, The Green Party - 358
• Adam Gaines, Independent - 126
• Andrew Michael Hagon, Liberal Democrat - 349
• Steve Jack, Freedom Alliance, No Lockdowns, No Curfews - 72
• Chris Killick - 248
• Sam Lee, Independent - 2,904
• Claire Martin, Heritage Party - 468
• Jill Mortimer, Conservative Party - 15,529
• John Prescott, Reform UK - 368
• Thelma Doris Walker, Independent - 250
• W. Ralph Ward-Jackson, Independent - 157
• Paul Daniel Williams, Labour Party - 8,589

Conservative candidate - soon to be MP - Jill Mortimer hails her victory as a "truly historic" result, and pledges to "work tirelessly" for the town in Parliament to bring "jobs and investment".

She says it has become apparent people in the town have "had enough" of Labour, and had "made it clear it's time for a change".