Politics latest: 'Give us time': Wes Streeting plays down Labour's local election results
The Labour Party will be conducting a lot of soul-searching after the loss of the Runcorn and Helsby parliamentary by-election on Thursday by just six votes.
What will help them figure out what went wrong will be plenty of polling, and we've just had the results of surveys conducted by Survation on behalf of the non-profit progressive group 38 Degrees.
The firm surveyed 444 adults in the constituency from 28 April to 2 May, the day of the by-election, on what their top issues were, and they found that immigration (20%), the NHS (16%), and the cost of living (10%) were the main issues raised.
Immigration was the top issue for 56% of Reform UK voters, compared to 2% of Labour voters.
What is encouraging for Labour is that they are the most trusted party on the majority of the main issues for voters - except immigration, where they are narrowly beaten by Reform UK.
Asked what would increase their trust in politicians, the answer was quite simple - delivery.
They want to see reduced NHS waiting times, government supporting pensioners, punishing businesses who break the rules, and funding local services.
Interestingly, reducing immigration actually scored behind these measures - except for those for whom immigration was their biggest concern at this by-election due to worries about its impact on the NHS and the economy.
A clear majority of voters (54%) think the wealthy should pay more in taxes to fund decent public services - although Reform UK voters were split on that, with a narrow plurality believing they already pay their fair share.
Damian Lyons Lowe, CEO of Survation, said the survey reveals the "complexity" behind this "landmark result for Reform UK".
"Runcorn and Helsby doesn't look like a typical Reform seat: higher levels of education, more mixed demographically, and far from the party's Leave-heavy heartlands," he said.
"These 'held-back' voters - financially stretched, politically unanchored, are open to disruption. Runcorn and Helsby now joins a growing list of places where Reform can credibly win - and that should be a wake-up call to all parties competing in similar territory."
Matthew McGregor, CEO of 38 Degrees, added that this survey "shows voters haven't seen or felt the change they wanted", and that "action on the cost of living and saving the NHS remain key to winning voters' trust".
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an hour ago
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Stockton and the wider Teesside area has higher than national average rates of unemployment, poverty and low educational attainment – trailing the rest of Britain in no small part as the legacy of a de-industrial revolution. Once described by William Gladstone as an 'infant Hercules', a hotbed of steel making, shipbuilding and chemicals, Teesside has suffered waves of job losses in the past half century amid Britain's broader industrial decline. 'It was central to British industrial capitalism, as a relatively prosperous booming place. The fall from grace has been huge,' says Luke Telford, an academic at York university and author on Brexit and industrial decline. 'Deindustrialisation acts as the economic backdrop to a lot of the problems, combined with the lack of an alternative. It has been an unjust transition, without really a plan in place. 'It gives rise to this sense that nobody listens to us, nobody really cares, we're just left to languish. 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The tallest building in Middlesbrough, standing empty. It symbolises the area's decline. Call centres were regarded as this new globalised service industry that was going to replace the relatively well-paid industrial jobs. But obviously that's not how it turned out.' But the story of Teesside's economic troubles is not uniform. 'We need to talk about the upside,' says Tania Cooper, the managing director of Steel Benders, a metal-bashing firm operating on the banks of the Tees in the shadow of Middlesbrough football club's Riverside stadium. The business owner sees burgeoning opportunities for economic growth, if regional leaders and central government get things right. While Teesside has some of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country, there are also dozens of affluent villages and market towns also dotted about the picturesque spot underneath the Cleveland hills. 'It's not all doom and gloom. It's not grim up north, I wouldn't want to live anywhere else,' Cooper says. 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However, his leadership has not been without controversy. Deals done at the Teesworks regeneration site and freeport have involved local business people who donated to the mayor. While an independent review found no evidence to support allegations of corruption or illegality, it warned the project was excessively secretive and could not ensure public money was being well spent. Still, many local business leaders point to the project as a galvanising force for attracting investment; alongside central government prioritising the development of green jobs in the area. Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion 'People definitely connect with that past narrative about the area. They feel it, they're proud of it, and they want it to continue. If that means net zero Teesworks and green energy: so be it, great,' says Kiran Fothergill, a former Tory candidate in Middlesbrough, and the sixth-generation director of Pickerings Lifts, one of Teesside's oldest manufacturers, based in Stockton. There are hopes that offshore wind will be big business, including the construction of a £900m monopile manufacturing facility by South Korea's SeAH Wind that will be the world's largest. The government is investing heavily in a £4bn carbon capture and storage project alongside BP and Equinor, aiming to create 2,000 jobs. That many of the opportunities rely on a net zero transition ought to make campaigning tough for Reform, given Farage's pledge to cancel the central plank of government policy. 'I know people are saying they're being replaced by jobs in the green industry, solar and the windfarms, but for every job there, we're losing more, probably in the typical industrial sectors,' Mac says. 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Several of Teesside's heaviest carbon emitters and industrial businesses are in danger of closing down operations before the new green jobs arrive, amid sky-high energy and carbon costs. Britain has among the highest industrial electricity costs in the world, while gas prices have more than doubled since 2021. There are fears hundreds of jobs could be lost at the Saudi chemical firm Sabic's Olefins 6 plant – known as 'the cracker' – at Wilton, after the company paused a multimillion-pound upgrade project, amid spiralling costs and concerns about high energy prices. CF Industries, a US company that took on ICI's Billingham fertiliser plant, closed its ammonia plant at the site two years ago with the loss of almost 40 jobs, blaming high energy costs. Paul Peacock, a former production technician and Unite union rep at Sabic, says losing the jobs would be 'another nail in the chemical coffin' for Teesside. 'The area would go into further decline, you then get the sort of politics of Reform coming in promising everything – and it's easy to see why people would listen, when they have lost good, well-paid jobs.' Fazia Hussain-Brown, Unite's regional officer who represents workers at CF Fertilisers and Sabic, says that while locals 'want something different' and have been let down by some of Labour's policies, Reform is not the answer. 'Farage is a slogan man, he sends out slogans with no substance behind, because he's never had to justify it.' On the site of Wilton International, the miles of twisted metal pipes, chimneys and cooling towers on the south bank of the river, shows first-hand Britain's chequered industrial past, present and future all in one spot. As many as 25,000 people worked here half a century ago, on an 809-hectare (2,000-acre) site first opened by ICI in 1949 as the showpiece of industrial Britain, producing nylon, plastics and other human-made materials. The research hub and office block of the old ICI plant is now home to the Centre for Process Innovation (CPI), a government-backed social enterprise that supports scientists and companies with testing facilities to take their lab-based ideas into full-scale industrial production. Equipped with high-voltage power, bomb blast bays, steam pipes, and load-bearing beams and floors – first put in place by ICI in the 1970s before the decline and demise of the industrial giant – Wilton has plenty of infrastructure and land to help more industrial businesses grow. Graeme Cruickshank, CPI's chief technology officer, hopes the government's recently announced industrial strategy will provide more long-term strategic investment to support growing manufacturers in the low-carbon economy. Creating the jobs Teesside needs could depend on it. 'We always made stuff that was dirty, hard and heavy. It's not unrealistic for us to do it again.'
