Coming soon: the next red wall by-election

This Thursday is set to be a psephologist’s dream with the biggest set of polls outside of a general election in UK history. Amid talk of a ‘British midterms’ the so-called ‘Super Thursday’ will see contests for Holyrood, Cardiff Bay, London’s assembly and some 5,000 council seats across the country. But in Westminster at least one race looms above all others: the Hartlepool by-election and whether the Tories can make further in-roads into Labour’s once impregnable red wall.

Boris Johnson’s visit there today has set alarm bells ringing in Labour HQ as party managers would be unlikely to dispatch a sitting PM to a seat three days before polling unless there was a good chance of winning it. But even if Labour manage to cling on to the seat, the electoral fun won’t stop there as another challenging by-election looks imminent for the party.