North Herts local elections: ‘We want to show Labour can demolish the blue wall’

Over the last few years, Labour has won a string of by-elections in both places it broadly expected to win – like Wakefield and Rutherglen, both held by the party in 2017 – and in places it would not, in a normal election year, devote significant resource to.

In the latter category we find Selby and Ainsty, Wellingborough, and Mid Bedfordshire. To fulfil the promise of Labour’s current exceptionally good polling, the party needs to keep what it took at the next general election.

The best indication of whether the party is likely to do this comes with today’s local elections. In Mid Bedfordshire, where in October Alistair Strathern took the seat for Labour with a slim majority of 1,192, Labour activists have been pounding the pavements both to secure the council and to lay the groundwork for a general election later in the year.

The results here might be particularly reflective, as due to boundary changes the elections are all-out: every seat on North Hertfordshire District Council is up for grabs.

It’s a fairly affluent area, looping around Stevenage to take in a series of towns and villages. At present, the authority is Labour-led but in no overall control; Labour has 19 seats and the Lib Dems and Tories are on 15 apiece. Two new seats are being added at this cycle, raising the total number from 49 to 51.

The council covers parts of three current Westminster seats, all presently held by the Conservatives: at the general, Labour’s Mid Beds MP Alistair Strathern will fight the new Hitchin seat, made up in part of his current constituency and in part of Bim Afolami’s current Hitchin and Harpenden seat.

Labour and Lib Dems battle it out for disaffected Tories

I spent a packed eve of poll in scenic North Herts for LabourList, trying to get a sense of how things will pan out.

On the doorstep, Labour campaigners tell me before we get going, the issues that have been coming up in recent weeks are familiar ones: GP access and the high cost of childcare. People are sick of the Tories, but often somewhat politically apathetic, and both Labour and the Lib Dems have been campaigning hard to stake out a position as the main opposition and capture disaffected Tory votes, a dynamic that also characterised much of last year’s often hostile by-election campaign.

In a day’s campaigning, I encounter only one person who tells me they’re voting Conservative (and perhaps even more surprisingly, none of the terse “no thank yous” that most canvassers can recognise as a solid “against”) but plenty of people are planning on voting to get the Tories out. How exactly to do this seems to be the most important question on many people’s minds.

‘We’re talking to people who’ve not heard from Labour in a long time’

We start off in the idyllic village of Pirton – a may pole has been set up on the village green – part of Hitchwood, Offa and Hoo ward, currently represented by three Conservatives. One man I canvas, weighing up between a Labour and a Lib Dem vote, tells me that nothing works anymore, and is particularly concerned by ambulance delays. His voting dilemma is one that comes up again and again.

Local Labour and Co-operative councillor Chris Hinchliff claims that the local Lib Dems “have been busy stirring up apathy” with a supply of questionable bar charts. “Meanwhile, the Labour team have focused our campaign on our fully costed manifesto for a fairer, greener North Herts.”

“We’ve spoken to over 16,000 voters across the district in this campaign, including many who haven’t heard from Labour for a long time. We’re fighting for every vote.”

In the afternoon, we head to Hitchin Priory, in the town that gives the new constituency its name. An anecdotally slightly stronger Labour presence runs up against voters asking themselves the same questions about the Lib Dems or Labour. Either way, it seems clear that the Tories are in for a poor showing, with their best hope a fortuitously split vote.

Tories could face ‘electoral wipeout’ in heartlands

Hinchliff’s colleague Cllr Nigel Mason has represented Hitchin Oughton ward since 2021. He tells me that “2024 represents an historic opportunity for Labour in North Herts”, offering “the opportunity to deliver both a Labour Council and to elect a Labour MP here this year”.

On the seeming lack of Conservative support in what would once have been considered a true blue area, safe at both locals and general elections, Mason says the Tories face winning possibly as few as five seats, which would constitute an “electoral wipe-out in North Herts, a council they have controlled for 40 of the past 50 years – closer to their traditional numbers in Hackney or Ealing than Hertfordshire or Essex.”

“We have seen a sustained collapse in the Tory vote as the area witnesses fundamental demographic change. On the back of the stunning Labour victory in Mid Beds we are aiming to show it is Labour that can demolish the so-called ‘blue wall’.”

Pitching breakfast clubs outside school

A great many residents of Hitchin commute to London for work – it’s half an hour on the train from King’s Cross – and I finish off my day’s campaigning with a station leaflet, targeting returning workers heading home on the rush hour trains; earlier in the day we’d done a school gate round at a small village primary school, handing out leaflets that highlighted Labour’s school breakfast club commitment.

The response at Hitchin station is somewhat muted – people want to get home – but notably friendly, with a healthy clip of people assuring the team that they’ll be voting Labour in the morning.

A good result here will be a massive relief for a local Labour Party that’s gearing up for a tough general election campaign, marking out Labour as the opposition to the Tories.

This weekend’s results, in North Herts and other southern, traditionally Tory “blue wall” areas like it, will tell us a lot about how the forthcoming campaign will be played, and even hint at what its results might be.

Read more of our coverage of the 2024 local elections here.

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