There is a confusion here in the election piece, which comes from The Guardian’s list of potential Conservative losses. These are the 2024 seats based on notional majorities after boundary changes. The Conservatives will not hold Blyth - but it doesn’t make the list because they don’t hold it. The new seat, Blyth and Ashington, had a notional Labour majority in 2019. They won’t hold Berwick on Tweed either but mainly because it will now be known as North Northumberland (though some landslide scenarios question this). How The Guardian are projecting Hartlepool is not clear. Again, it would not be a Tory loss from 2019 as Labour held it. Whether the Conservatives would hold on to their by-election gain is another question - and hard to predict but I suspect not. “They’s funny folks doon there”, as my Granddad would have had it. So the probability is that The Guardian’s list of losses imply a sole hypothetical Conservative.
Yeah, I didn't interrogate it too deeply, to be honest, but you're right there's some missed detail on the impact of boundary changes - definitely a fag-packet mathematical exercise rather than a proper assessment. The divvying up of Wansbeck does muddy the Northumberland waters. I refuse to predict anything related to Hartlepool, ever. It's just too wild a place.
There is a confusion here in the election piece, which comes from The Guardian’s list of potential Conservative losses. These are the 2024 seats based on notional majorities after boundary changes. The Conservatives will not hold Blyth - but it doesn’t make the list because they don’t hold it. The new seat, Blyth and Ashington, had a notional Labour majority in 2019. They won’t hold Berwick on Tweed either but mainly because it will now be known as North Northumberland (though some landslide scenarios question this). How The Guardian are projecting Hartlepool is not clear. Again, it would not be a Tory loss from 2019 as Labour held it. Whether the Conservatives would hold on to their by-election gain is another question - and hard to predict but I suspect not. “They’s funny folks doon there”, as my Granddad would have had it. So the probability is that The Guardian’s list of losses imply a sole hypothetical Conservative.
Yeah, I didn't interrogate it too deeply, to be honest, but you're right there's some missed detail on the impact of boundary changes - definitely a fag-packet mathematical exercise rather than a proper assessment. The divvying up of Wansbeck does muddy the Northumberland waters. I refuse to predict anything related to Hartlepool, ever. It's just too wild a place.