Disease knocking of left-wing parties the world over strikes again in UK

In the UK, with Jeremy Corbyn gone from the leadership and firm hands back on the tiller steering a sensible centrist course, the Labour Party has gone to… a new series of disastrous defeats. Last Thursday saw a grab bag of elections, from a Scottish “devolved” poll to local councils to a byelection in the northern seat of Hartlepool.

Scotland is a headache for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (more on this later) but the other two were disasters for Labour. Local council elections are a big thing in the UK given the absence of regional governments, with a proportion of councils up for election every year. Labour lost more than 300 seats and the Tories gained 200. Given that incumbent governments are usually punished in these outings, and that the Johnson government staggers from crisis to crisis, that’s a pretty good result for the Tories.

Even better for them was the result in Hartlepool, your classic north-east constituency: a fishing town which became a Victorian shipbuilding city, all the industries closed in the ’80s after the old town heart had been ripped out for a shopping centre in the ’70s, which is now dying too. The place apparently got a marina in the 2000s, which was meant to fix everything. During the Blair years its MP was Peter Mandelson, the co-architect of New Labour, after which the place voted 70% for “leave”. It has been Labour for all but six years since 1945.