Reform UK Ltd have won all 12 seats that were up for grabs in the Hartlepool local council elections of Thursday 7 May. Hartlepool elects a third of the council every year. So a dozen seats were up for election this year.
Balance of power
This election takes the number of Reform UK councillors up to 15.
The Labour group has shrunk to 14 councillors. The Conservative Party now has no representation on the council.
The Green Party are still without councillors. Their votes were so small that they only managed to split the left vote in two wards to allow Reform wins.
Will Starmer go?
Among the Labour councillors to be voted out was Pamela Hargreaves, the Council Leader.
Hargreaves is married to Jonathan Brash, who was elected the town’s Labour MP last year. He has called for Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s resignation.
Brash told The Guardian on Thursday,: “I think the very best thing the prime minister could do now is address the nation tomorrow and set out a timetable for his departure.”
But Starmer is adamant that he will stay.
Other also rans
This wasn’t just an anti-Labour protest vote. More colourful characters to be shown the door include the independent Gordon Cranney. When he stood for election as a Tory in 2022, he neglected to tell his party superiors that he was on trial for assaulting his wife by beating, which he had admitted. He only announced his conviction after the election – a delay that led to his expulsion from the Tory Party and his decision to hang on as an independent councillor.
Another election casualty, the Conservative Bob Buchan, lost his seat to Labour’s Jennifer Elliott in May 2021. Not one to bear a grudge, he took out a court action against her over an inaccurate campaign leaflet. He lost the case, incurring a hefty legal bill, but he later won his seat back in a subsequent election. Now he has also lost to Reform.
The not so independent Independents
Labour managed to secure control of the council in 2024 after a few years’ rule by a Tory-Independent Union- Brexit Party coalition.
Now the council is under No Overall Control. With Reform having just one seat more than Labour there will follow some horse trading to get the seven Independents to join forces with them. That should not prove to be difficult as Hartlepool Independents can be quite flexible with their party loyalties.
Take Shane Moore for instance, the former council leader. He was not standing at this election.
Originally elected in 2016, Moore served as Independent, UKIP, Independent Group, Independent Union, Brexit Party then Independent Union again. Before becoming a councillor Moore was Chair of the local Conservative Party branch.
In the future we might even see the remaining Independents join Reform.
Hartlepool boasted the country’s first Reform councillor, John Tennant, in January 2021.
Next year’s local election in Hartlepool sees another dozen seats up for grabs. If there’s a repeat of the recent landslide, Reform’s domination of Hartlepool council would be secure.
One year in politics
One year is an eternity in politics, however. If other councils are anything to go by, several Reform councillors might quit altogether, balking at the workload.
Immediately before the election the local party announced they would reinstate councillors’ special responsibility allowances. Could that tempt the whole group to stay? Or will the move prove unpalatable to a town afflicted by widespread poverty?
Some councillors might follow the lead of ex- Reformers at Kent County Council and join the new Restore Britain.
Others like colleagues elsewhere might be expelled for breaking the council’s codes of conduct. Within a few weeks the new monitoring organisation ReformWatch (no relation to us) had already logged over a thousand code of conduct breaches by Reform councillors around the country.
Or the town might lose interest if Reform’s policies do not deliver the sunlit uplands that were promised. Council tax for instance has been increased by many of the Reform controlled councils despite their earlier pledges to reduce it – even in Kent, Reform’s flagship county council.
The election turnout was only 31.51%. Getting more Poolies to the polling booths would of course make all the difference to the results.
Does the Hartlepool result indicate a future Reform wave elsewhere? This year Hartlepool was the only authority in the Tees Valley to hold elections. But this town is a unique place: what happens here might not be duplicated anywhere else.
After all, in 2002 Hartlepool elected its football club’s monkey mascot as mayor. As it happens, the man in the monkey suit, Stewart Drummond, did rather a good job and went on to be re-elected for another two terms, until the post was abolished. Who knew.
