Whatever the result.....

[Inspector Knacker]

...on polling day, the appointment of the dear doctor has revealed a stupendous lack of realism on the part of the Labour Party leadership. I get the feeling that when the by-election opportunity arose, the 'isolated' planners in London thought lovely, they're as dumb as rocks up there, they truly are 'votes in the bag dumb'.
Apparently presented with an unmissable opportunity to get one of Starmer's men in, they  took  over and organised this as though the seat's in the bag, a few walkabouts, prepare fawning acceptance speech and job's a good un! Doh.
The docs role in stripping out hospital services being missed out on, and expecting it not to be discovered, was a sign of a Charge of the Light Brigade attitude of lethal over confidence.
The bronzed and smartly suited soon to be local MP arrived as the heir apparent, confident, in fact too confident..... he was just killing time till his coronation. The drones would emerge to vote and he could join Starmer's Pretorian Guard..... as the first fissures and cracks began to show...this was not going to be the Blitzkrieg smash and grab, back to London jolly he anticipated .

[Lucy Lass-Tick]

They played the same game with Doc pothole - but Theresa May's snap election meant that he'd barely collected his pass for the Kremlin, so couldn't be elevated to the MP candidacy - therefore we got Hill (the understudy). For the life of me I can't understand why they chose Williams. he fails to tick so many boxes.

[Inspector Knacker]

For Labour, I suspect it's a case of 'It's Hartlepool, they'll vote Labour, it's what they do".
They don't appear to have done any homework at all on the town.

[akarjl2]

For Labour, I suspect it's a case of 'It's Hartlepool, they'll vote Labour, it's what they do".

Well not an unrealistic assumption given the electorate chose a monkey as a mayor....then allowed a group of clowns to run the clowncill.

[Inspector Knacker]

For Labour, I suspect it's a case of 'It's Hartlepool, they'll vote Labour, it's what they do".

Well not an unrealistic assumption given the electorate chose a monkey as a mayor....then allowed a group of clowns to run the clowncill.

The monkey election was the Hartlepool electorate saying none of the others. Mind you the major Party spokesmen were well peeved, especially the little fat bloke with the barbed wire 'beard'.