Conservative Ben Houchen has pulled it off again, winning the vote for Mayor of Tees Valley for the third time, in a formerly dyed-in-the-wool Labour region. As the post was a new creation when he first won it in 2017, Houchen is the one and only incumbent in the office. He didn’t achieve the 72.8% of the poll that he won in his 2021 landslide- he was down to 53.6% of the vote over Labour Chris McEwan’s 41.3%.
The poll was a swing away from Houchen of 19% and towards Labour of 14%.
That swing is a phenomenal result for Labour.
But it was still cause for Conservative celebration. Given the Tory calamity of the local elections their jubilation was less about Houchen winning and more about him not losing.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak hot-footed it to the count for a photo-op with the victorious Mayor.
A run-off between Tories and Labour in 2021, the election this time was a three-horse race. The Liberal Democrats fielded a candidate in the shape of Simon Thorley. But his 5% of the poll was not enough even to split the vote. His result might indicate some tactical voting.
After a night of electoral disasters for the Tories, it seems that Houchen avoided the Tory wipeout. How did he do it? To find out let’s step back in time a few years.
Houchen in politics
Politics wasn’t always so easy for the golden boy. In 2012, as a fresh-faced 27- year-old, he was the Tory parliamentary candidate in the Middlesbrough by-election. He came fourth of eight runners with just 1,063 votes or 6.3%.
In 2014, aged 29, he lost as the Conservative candidate for the North East region in the European Parliament elections.
Then came his fight in May 2017 to become Mayor of Tees Valley, by which time he had been a Stockton councillor for six years.
He defeated Labour’s Sue Jeffrey by 2.2 percentage points. That’s hardly a landslide.
The mayoral polls take place every three years, but the 2020 election was delayed for a year due to Covid. By then Houchen had spent three years in mayoral office in election campaign mode, promoting his office and achievements to the max, deploying his skills as a social media samurai and leading his brigade of loyal press and pr staff at Tees Valley Combined Authority.
He launched his re-election campaign in January 2020, before the poll was postponed. In the next month came news that he was in talks to buy the SSI-owned steelworks site at the mouth of the Tees. Formerly a British Steel plant, the Thai-owned steel site had closed in 2015 after China’s dumping on the world market had undermined steel prices and rendered the SSI operation unviable.
SSI had been a major local employer, and the works’ closure was a catastrophe for the local economy, causing a loss of some 5,000 jobs. So Houchen’s purchase deal with SSI in March 2020 and his promise to bring back steelmaking in three years was greeted with relief. Houchen became the local hero.
At the turn of this decade Britain was still in the grip of Brexit euphoria and Johnson’s December 2019 general election win, with his loud pledge to “get Brexit done”.
By the May 2021 mayoral election, the Tories had started to break through Labour’s North East Red Wall. The simultaneous Hartlepool parliamentary by-election that returned Tory Jill Mortimer meant the party big guns could take photo ops with Ben in the same trip as their visit to Mortimer’s campaign.
At the 2021 mayoral election, Houchen was returned with 72.8% of the vote, against Labour’s Jesse Jo Jacobs with 27.2%.
The result reflected Houchen’s powerful personal brand.
Scandals
Since then, there have been plenty of scandals to tarnish that public image, but he has survived them all.
The most damaging one was the controversy surrounding the old SSI site, renamed Teesworks, and the joint venture also called Teesworks Ltd, between Houchen’s South Tees Development Corporation and four local businessmen. The latter were gifted 90% of the joint venture.
Through land deals, consultancy and scrap sales, the four businessmen have so far made £108mn without investing in the site. The cost of cleaning up the toxic wasteland and preparing it for use came to £560mn, paid from the public purse.
Then there was the mass sea life die-off that damaged the fishing industry, which many believe to be connected to the Teesworks clean-up.
Another story has been the effort by Houchen and the Teesworks Ltd businessmen to impose a ransom fee on neighbour PD Ports for access to their property. Houchen lost the case this March in the High Court. Legal costs – from public funds – are thought to be at least £4.3mn.
There’s also the findings of the Gove Review into Houchen’s administration. The report ruled out corruption but made 28 recommendations for improvement in areas including oversight, scrutiny, value for money and financial risk.
That’s just for starters. So how did Houchen overcome his negative record?
What did Houchen do next?
Firstly, he’s been running a constant election campaign since he was selected as Tory candidate for the 2017 election.
For this, he’s king of the Facebook and Instagram ad, spending nearly £87,000 since November 2018, according to the Facebook Ad Library.
Houchen spent around £5,500 on Facebook ads in the two weeks before the election.
To give an idea of scale, one of his ads, which cost between £900 and £999. (Facebook can’t be more specific), appeared on screens between 70,000 and 80,000 times.
His social media is slick and professional. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram stream constant success-story pictures of him on building sites with the hard hat and the yellow vest. His Facebook page has 47,000 followers.
It helps that he’s photogenic. As a 32-year-old in 2017, he was at least ten years younger than other Metropolitan Mayors.
On top of this he enjoys adulation from the local mainstream press.
He also has the PR of his own office, funded by the TVCA. There was moreover the loud support from central government, his Teesworks project frequently lauded as a success story by government ministers.
He’s brought money into the region in the shape of a slew of government grants. Call it “Pork Barrel Politics” if you will. It’s still money.
He is moreover adept at economies with the truth. Near to election day he declared in a Facebook ad,
“I promise to build the new state of the art hospital Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool deserve.”
Even though building a hospital is outside his remit.
His message is: regional recovery from Labour neglect. Blair is the culprit: Thatcher is never mentioned.
Most of all he has promised employment, at Teesworks and its new Teesside Freeport, the promised job numbers ranging from 12,000 to 20,000.
There was only one problem: the toxic image of the Conservative Party. Houchen distanced himself from the national Tories even as he stood as Conservative and at the count, he was the only candidate without a rosette.
The vox pops on TV news interviewed Houchen voters who had no idea that he was a Conservative.
The Labour campaign
McEwan tackled this populist giant with a traditional, gentlemanlike campaign.
Labour did spend on Facebook ads too – £7,225 on around 100 ads since September last year.
Otherwise, they made little effort on the social media front. McEwan has 1,300 Facebook followers. His name rarely appeared on Twitter/X until the final few days of the campaign.
Added to this the strongest Houchen critics on Twitter/X were a group calling themselves the #Resistance, with their #BinBen campaign. While their assault on Houchen was armed with hard facts, they chose not to promote any alternative candidate. They no doubt helped to mobilise the Labour vote. But in the absence of a Labour social media strategy, the Twitter/X conversation focused more attention on the mayor than on his election rivals.
The policy ideas presented by McEwan were interesting but thin on the ground. They included: career reviews for people at different stages of their lives, better parking at town centres, general comments about green industry.
Labour’s policy promises were realistic but nowhere near Houchen’s visionary if dubious claims.
They didn’t add up to a joined-up regeneration plan for the Tees Valley. Labour, we are informed, has yet to produce a revival strategy for the region.
Meanwhile, Houchen has already delivered that most precious of commodities, the golden straw to drowning men: the hope of jobs. If not the jobs themselves.
But let’s not forget that huge swing to Labour. Perhaps the effort to unseat a populist politician just takes more time. After all Houchen won 81,930 votes over McEwan’s 63,141. Can the diehard Houchen supporters ever be persuaded to place their vote elsewhere?
With all five councils of the Tees Valley now under Labour control, Houchen will find it harder to maintain his image.
And the Labour councillors could start on their own regeneration plan, with or without the Metro Mayor.
