Khalid Mahmood, shadow minister for defence, has announced that he quit Starmer’s front bench ahead of the local election results:

It would be easy for Labour MPs and members to whinge about the unfairness of this summary of the past decade. But we must recognise that is how we are seen by so many people in the places that were once unfailingly loyal to us – as a party that has lost its way. It is only by engagement on a local level, meeting eye to eye with voters and hearing their concerns, that we will fix that. I will be doing so not from the Labour front bench, but walking the streets of my constituency as a backbencher and talking face to face with the people I have the honour to serve. 

Despite running an absurd local election campaign based on NHS pay – despite local councils not having any control over it – a new poll from NursingNotes reveals a massive 42% intended to vote for the Tories going into today’s midterms – versus just 32% for Labour. Despite only handing out a 1% payrise to them, Labour still haemorrhaged their votes…

The poll of 1,843 healthcare workers also showed 18% were planning on voting for local independents, with smaller parties picking up the final 3% of votes. As NursingNotes points out, a 2019 election survey found 82% voted for Corbyn versus just 6% for the Tories. Just one final blow to Starmer heading into the weekend…

Incredible result from the Tees Valley, as Ben Houchen wins re-election with 73% of the vote, up from his 2017 score of just 51.1%. A landslide.

The scores in total:

Houchen (Con): 121,964

Jacobs (Lab): 45,641

Turnout up as well, from 21.3% to 33.95%…

Hat-tip to Mikey Smith for farcical footage of the Hartlepool inflatable Boris, which collapsed perfectly on cue during the PM’s photoshoot directly underneath it – despite managing to stay inflated all night. Critics will say it was merely mirroring its mini-me’s release of hot air during his victory speech…

Giving his Hartlepool post-mortem, Lord Adonis has come out to argue Sir Keir is not an election winner, lumping him in with the last 14 years of “weak or terrible” leaders post-Blair. When asked whether the party needs new leadership, Lord Adonis opined:

“I don’t think my Labour colleagues should be restricted to people who are currently members of the House of Commons in looking at the next leader. What they should look at is a person, a leader, who can really articulate a bold, credible, exciting and popular vision for the future…”

Does he have a particular Lord in mind?

What led to Labour’s historic loss in Hartlepool will no doubt be argued over by Corbynites and the Shadow Cabinet for the next few weeks in terms of policy and national strategy – as they are already doing this morning. Guido suspects insufficient time will be dedicated to examining just how poor was Labour’s candidate choice for the by-election: Dr. Paul Williams. Co-conspirators knew the obvious all along…

Given how precarious the electoral landscape was for Labour in Hartlepool, with a huge Brexit Party vote ripe for the Tories to win over, it was obvious from the start that selecting a Remainer like Williams was Labour taking the area for granted. Shortly after Guido first broke the news of incumbent Mike Hill’s resignation, Williams was spotted deleting pro-People’s Vote tweets. A sure sign he was about to try for the candidacy.

A day later, Guido exclusively revealed Labour was about to stitch the process up for Williams, compiling a shortlist of one and admitting to local activists both he and the party “aren’t quite as well informed as we’d like them to be re the town and our electorate”. LabourList editor Sienna Rodgers claims her B’nB host raised the stitch-up with her when she arrived in the town, despite not knowing she was there for the by-election.

Deleted tweets made headlines once again when it was discovered Williams had once posted about “Tory MILFs”. It wasn’t long before Guido unearthed more posts from him joking about the size of his manhood. Keir Starmer then fell flat on his face after wrongly claiming his candidate had deleted both the MILFs tweet, and posts in which he sucked up the Saudi regime after they paid for a junket to Saudi when he was an MP.

Locally the biggest scandal surrounding Williams erupted when Guido revealed he personally had been jointly responsible for a commissioning report that removed local hospital services from Hartlepool. It was Hartlepool TV what won it…

The icing on the cake finally came when Guido unearthed a deleted tweet from Williams in which he boasted about jetting off to Paris to eat foie gras – putting Peter Mandelson’s infamous ‘mushy peas’ story to shame.

This woeful campaign finally culminated in a car crash interview with Victoria Derbyshire, in which he was confronted about his MILFs tweet, his role in the hospital closure, and his Remainer beliefs – something he claimed the people of Hartlepool didn’t care about. This morning’s result shows how wrong he, and Labour, were…