READERS of the News & Star have been discussing what has gone wrong for the Labour Party following a disastrous tally in local elections.

The poor performance was highlighted by the loss of the Hartlepool by-election to the Conservatives. The constituency is part of the so-called ‘red wall’ of seats that historically backed the Labour Party – indeed, it had been held by the party since 1964.

The shift has also been seen in Cumbria – the party no longer has any MPs in the county since the 2019 election.

Mike James said: “The problem with the Labour London/Westminster-centric Champagne Socialist Party is that they don’t like the fact that the majority of Labour Party electorate have always been conservatives with a small c and they are loath to accept this.

“Boris now has the middle ground of popular politics and until Labour can recover the middle ground they’ll never win an election.”

Anthony Nicholson added: “Perhaps they should have concentrated on real issues, such as Covid, the economy and Brexit fallout.

“However they chose to waste two weeks worrying about the non issue of who paid for Boris’s wallpaper.”

Brian El Rincon felt the issues went back further. He said: “Problems escalated when they selected the wrong Miliband brother.”

Others blamed the new Labour leader. Will Hatton said: “Something in me feels that the people who established the Labour party would be spinning in their graves to know that the party leader is called 'Sir Keir', net worth ~£2 million.”