Labour’s Khalid Mahmood quits as shadow minister with blast at party’s ‘woke social media warriors’

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Keir Starmer is said to be planning a move out of London as a senior frontbencher quit with a withering attack on the ‘London-based bourgeoisie’ who have taken over the party ‘with the support of brigades of woke social media warriors’.

Khalid Mahmood, the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, quit as a shadow defence minister in the wake of Labour’s disastrous election meltdown that saw it surrender Hartlepool to the Conservatives.

Mr Starmer insisted he ‘takes responsibility’ and is ‘bitterly disappointed’, as sources told the Guardian he was planning to move the party from the capital. 

A clearly rattled Labour leader said the party had been ‘talking to ourselves’ rather than voters – insisting he is ready to do ‘whatever it takes’ to ‘fix’ the problems.

The humble comments in a TV clip came as Sir Keir finally surfaced nine hours after the extraordinary by-election defeat in Hartlepool kicked off a disastrous day of results.

He is now facing a battle for the party’s soul as Corbynites demand a lurch to the Left – and centrists complain he has nothing to say to ordinary people.

Stepping down tonight, Mr Mahmood, 59, who has been a Labour MP for 20 years, said Labour must recognise it is seen as ‘a party that has lost its way’ in places that were once ‘unfailingly loyal’.

‘It is only by engagement on a local level, meeting eye to eye with voters and hearing their concerns, that we will fix that,’ he said,.

‘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. ‘

He added: ‘The election of a Conservative MP in Hartlepool for the first time in the constituency’s modern history is yet another wake-up call for my party.

‘Peter Mandelson once enjoyed a 17,500 majority here. Now the Tories are deep into what was once safe Labour territory – the industrial heartlands of the North – with a 7,000 majority of their own.’

Mr Johnson hailed an extraordinary Tory surge as he visited Hartlepool after taking the rock-solid Labour seat for the first time in a by-election.

Flanked by his new MP Jill Mortimer, a jubilant PM said voters believe he can ‘deliver’ following the latest devastating hammer blow to the Red Wall. 

Council results are also looking like a catastrophe for Labour, with a slew of losses and Conservatives taking control in former strongholds such as Northumberland, Nuneaton and Dudley. 

As pressure mounts on Sir Keir, Lord Mandelson warned that returning to Socialist ‘la la land’ will not help.

The ex-Cabinet minister said Jeremy Corbyn was ‘still casting a very dark cloud over Labour’, adding: ‘He still gets them going on the doorstep.’ 

And Sir Keir gave little sign he is about to cave in to the hard-Left demands despite offering a grovelling admission of failure.

Instead he is believed to be preparing a radical reshuffle of his shadow cabinet within days as he desperately tries to restore links with working class voters.

Shadow chancellor Anneliese Dodds and shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth tipped for the axe.

He is sounding out high-profile figures including former work and pensions secretary Yvette Cooper about a possible return to the frontbench. 

‘I take full responsibility for the results, and I will take full responsibility for fixing things,’ Sir Keir said.

‘We have changed as a party, but we haven’t set out a strong enough case to the country. 

‘Very often we’ve been talking to ourselves instead of to the country and we’ve lost the trust of working people, particularly in places like Hartlepool.

‘I intend to do whatever is necessary to fix that.’

Challenged on whether that meant moving to the Left or Right, Sir Keir flannelled about stopping ‘quarreling amongst ourselves’. 

‘This is not a question of left or right. It is a question of whether we are facing the country,’ he said.

‘We have changed as a party but we’ve not made a strong enough case to the country, we’ve lost that connection, that trust, and I intend to rebuild that and do whatever is necessary to rebuild that trust.’

Ms Mortimer said her victory – with a 7,000 majority after overturning the Opposition’s previous margin of 3,500 – showed that ‘Labour have taken the people of Hartlepool for granted for too long’. ‘People have had enough,’ she added in a speech at the count.

The victory by 15,529 to 8,589 votes shows that Mr Johnson’s realignment of the British political landscape is continuing, with more of the so-called Red Wall collapsing. The 16 per cent swing is believed to be the biggest to a governing party in a by-election since the Second World War.

It heaps pressure on Sir Keir amid a growing revolt from hard-Left activists. 

The party is now bracing for further bad news as the votes are counted in England’s council and mayoral battles following ‘Super Thursday’ elections. 

Questions are being asked over the choice of a Remainer former MP as the Labour candidate in Brexit-voting Hartlepool. 

As brutal recriminations began, Corbyn allies Diane Abbott and John McDonnell were among those demanding a more left-wing approach.  

Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle tweeted: ‘Good to see valueless flag waving and suit wearing working so well… or not?’

Corbynite MP Richard Burgon said: ‘We are going backwards in areas we need to be winning. Labour’s leadership needs to urgently change direction.’ 

Conservative Ben Houchen was re-elected as Tees Valley Mayor with a whopping 73 per cent of the vote, up from 40 per cent in the 2017 election, while Labour leaders in Sheffield, Oldham and Harlow were among 120 of its councillors in England to lose seats so far. In contrast, the Tories gained 95 seats and the Lib Dems gained five.

Labour group leaders lost their seats in Northumberland, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and Derbyshire – where Labour was hoping a to make gains, but ended up ceding ground.  

The Tories won all nine of the seats being contested in Redditch, the first council result of the night, gaining seven from Labour. They took control of Nuneaton & Bedworth from Labour after winning 13 of the first 14 seats declared. The Conservatives also seized control of Harlow Council from Labour, and gained a seat to take overall control in Northumberland – as well as taking charge in Dudley.

However, despite the massive gains in Red Wall areas there were a few setbacks for Mr Johnson. The Tories lost control of Remain-voting Cambridgeshire after shipping eight seats – five to the Lib Dems, two to Labour and one to an independent.

The mayoral contest in the West Mids is looking miserable for Labour, while sitting MP Tracy Brabin securing the West Yorkshire mayor job could leave Sir Keir facing another challenging by-election in Batley & Spen. 

Mr Johnson – who also viewed a large inflatable effigy of himself near the count – said in 2019 voters wanted him to ‘get Brexit done’ and ‘we delivered on that’.

Now people were giving him a mandate to ‘get on with delivering with everything else’. 

‘It’s a mandate for us to continue to deliver, not just for the people of Hartlepool and the fantastic people of the north east, but for the whole of the country,’ the premier said.

‘If there is a lesson out of this whole election campaign across the whole of the UK is that the public want us to get on with focusing on their needs and their priorities, coming through the pandemic and making sure we build back better.’

He insisted the UK was reaping the benefits of having pushed through the departure from the EU. 

‘This a a place that voted for Brexit. We got Brexit done and then we are able to do other things thanks to that,’ he said.

‘It’s thanks to Brexit that we have been able to go ahead with the freeport in the whole of Teesside, do things like take back control of our borders.

‘We are able to deal with things like the European Super League and, of course, we are able to do things a bit differently when it comes to the vaccine rollout that has been so important and enabled (us) to deliver that faster than other European countries.’ 

Stopping off at Severn Trent Academy in Coventry on his way to Hartlepool this afternoon, the PM said: ‘I know that the results have been coming in since this morning and there’s clearly a lot more to go, and it’s early days, but it’s a very encouraging set of results so far.

‘I think that’s really because we have been focusing, as a Government, on our priorities, the people’s priorities, and bouncing back from the pandemic as much as we can and getting through it.

‘It’s been very nice to be here at Severn Trent talking to them about the 500 Kickstarters they’re employing, which is I think what everybody wants to see as we go through towards the end of the roadmap – really making sure that we’re getting people into work, getting the economy bouncing back very, very strongly in a way that I know it will.

‘Anyway, I’ll be saying a bit more later on in Hartlepool.’

The Conservatives were increasing bullish about Hartlepool as they got the vote out yesterday, despite trying to manage expectations publicly by claiming it was ‘looking tough’. 

Meanwhile glum Labour activists had complained they were suffering from ‘Long Corbyn’ and on track for disaster.

Pensions Minister Guy Opperman predicted on Twitter shortly after the polls closed that Jill Mortimer would win the seat for the Conservatives. 

Amazingly, a shock poll by Survation earlier this week that showed the Tories 17 points ahead underplayed the final margin. 

In interviews this morning, Conservative Party chair Amanda Milling credited Mr Johnson’s personal appeal. ‘He is popular but he has also delivered… we made the promise at the general election that we would get Brexit done. That is very much what we did last year.’   

As Labour plunged immediately into a bitter civil war, former leader Jeremy Corbyn said Sir Keir needed a ‘bolder vision’.

‘Tory gains are bad news for jobs, the environment & public services for the many not the few,’ he tweeted.

‘With millions not voting, these results show a loss of hope. We must offer a bolder vision to transform people’s lives & give them the confidence to strive for a more equal world.’

The Corbynite grassroots Momentum group said the result was a ‘disaster’ and warned Sir Keir could soon be ‘out of a job’.

Co-chair Andrew Scattergood said: ‘A transformative socialist message has won in Hartlepool before, and it would have won again.

‘Starmer’s strategy of isolating the left and replacing meaningful policy with empty buzzwords has comprehensively failed.

‘If he doesn’t change direction, not only will he be out of a job – but the Labour Party may be out of government forever.’

Diane Abbott, who was shadow home secretary during the Corbyn era, tweeted: ‘Crushing defeat for Labour in Hartlepool.

‘Not possible to blame Jeremy Corbyn for this result. Labour won the seat twice under his leadership. Keir Starmer must think again about his strategy.’

Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘Keir’s got to be given his chance and I’ve said that all the way along.

‘I’m not going to be one of those people treating (him) the way they treated Jeremy (Corbyn) – always challenging him, coups and all the rest.

‘Keir now needs to sit down and think through what happened in this campaign, and what I’ve been saying to him is you need to demonstrate to people the sort of society you want to create, the policy programme that will achieve that society, and you need to get back to that real grassroots campaign.

‘We must never again send our candidates into an election campaign almost naked, without a policy programme, without a clear view on what sort of society you want to create.

‘That’s the sort of thing that we need now.’ 

Lord Peter Mandelson, a former Labour MP for Hartlepool, said he felt ‘fairly gutted’ at the result.

‘I feel sad, disappointment above all, for the excellent campaign workers and party staff and volunteers and our excellent candidate, Paul Williams, who fought such a strong campaign,’ he said.

He added: ‘I also feel, I have to say, a mild fury, that the last 10 years of what we have been doing in the Labour Party nationally and locally has brought us to this result, because that is above all fundamentally an explanation of what’s happened today.’

Lord Mandelson went on: ‘What I would say is this, and remind the party we have not won a general election in 16 years.

‘We have lost the last four, with 2019 a catastrophe – the last 11 general elections read: lose, lose, lose, lose, Blair, Blair, Blair, lose, lose, lose, lose.

‘We need for once in this party to learn the lessons of those victories as well as those defeats, and I hope very much that when Keir and his colleagues in the shadow cabinet say this means that we have got to change direction that they actually mean it.’  

Lord Mandelson insisted that Brexit had not been raised with him once on the doorstep.  

‘The one thing they did raise with me however is Jeremy Corbyn – he is still casting a very dark cloud over Labour. Labour voters are not letting this off lightly, he still gets them going on the doorstep,’ he said.

‘One person said to me ‘Sort yourselves out, sort yourselves out. You picked the wrong brother and you ended up with Corbyn so that’s goodbye to you. When you’ve sorted yourselves out, we’ll look at you again’.

Another former Cabinet minister, Lord Adonis, gave an even more damning verdict. 

‘I supported Keir to replace Jeremy. There was no one else credible and retrieving the leadership from the hands of the Marxist far-left was the first step towards electability,’ he wrote in a blog.

‘I hoped that Keir, an effective ex-public prosecutor, might have sufficient leadership capacity and modernising social democratic vision to reshape Labour. 

‘Unfortunately, he turns out to be a transitional figure – a nice man and a good human rights lawyer, but without political skills or antennae at the highest level.’ 

Shadow minister Steve Reed was sent out to shore up Sir Keir’s position, insisting the party was getting a better reception on doorsteps.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast he said: ‘We’re going to see a lot more results throughout today and Saturday and over the weekend, from elections right across the country, so we’ll have a clearer picture at the end of that period, and I suspect the results are going to be patchy.

‘Certainly from my door-knocking – places like Sheffield, Nottingham, Bristol, Milton Keynes, Hertfordshire – the reaction on the doorstep to me as a Labour campaigner has been a lot warmer than it has been in recent years, but that isn’t enough if it’s not translating into votes.

‘So I think people understand the leader has changed, they don’t understand the party has changed, because we haven’t yet done enough to prove that.’

Meanwhile, former No10 chief Dominic Cummings launched an extraordinary Twitter diatribe against both Sir Keir and his former boss Mr Johnson.

In a brutal assessment, he wrote: ‘KS is a beta-lawyer-gamma-politician, like ~all in SW1 he obsesses on Media Reality not Actual Reality, he’s played the lobby game (badly) for a year WITHOUT A MESSAGE TO THE COUNTRY, now the pundits will a/ savage him, b/ tell him he needs to focus on them more, more exclusives!’

He added: ‘A measure of how bad KS is: until I googled yesterday I didn’t know who Shadow CHX is & when I looked at photo I had 0 recognition, she never touched my consciousness in a year…’ 

Mr Cummings also took aim at the current No10 operation – with whom he has been engaged in a bitter war of words. 

‘We have a No10 & Opposition who see their job as Media Entertainment Service & neither knows how to be this better than TB/Mandy. Neither will try to be… a government,’ he wrote. 

In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon faces a nervous wait to find out if the SNP has won a Holyrood majority – seen as crucial to her hopes of forcing a second independence referendum.     

The coronavirus pandemic resulted in last year’s elections being delayed by 12 months.

That means that two years’ worth of polls took place across the UK yesterday, making for a bumper crop of results.  

Voters have had their say on the make-up of English councils, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Senedd as well as in a wave of mayoral contests, including in London.

A Labour source said this morning: ‘We’ve said all along the North East and the Midlands would be difficult. We also said the places declaring Thursday would be particularly difficult.

‘But, the message from voters is clear and we have heard it. Labour has not yet changed nearly enough for voters to place their trust in us.

‘We understand that. We are listening. And we will now redouble our efforts. Labour must now accelerate the programme of change in our party, to win back the trust and faith of working people across Britain.

‘People don’t want to hear excuses. Keir has said he will take responsibility for these results – and he will take responsibility for fixing it and changing the Labour Party for the better.’

The Hartlepool by-election outcome was triggered when former MP Mike Hill resigned in March amid sexual harassment allegations. 

Respected elections expert Professor Michael Thrasher said the results so far were a ‘nightmare’ for Labour and ‘the slide appears to be continuing’. 

He told Sky News that voters had ‘simply migrated from Labour to the Conservatives’. ‘That is a hard thing for voters to do but but we saw it in 2019 and we are seeing it again in 2021,’ he said.  

Voter turnout in the contest in Hartlepool was 42.55 per cent – a relatively high number for a Westminster by-election.   

Hartlepool was held by Labour with a majority of 3,595 in 2019, even as other bricks in the ‘Red Wall’ crumbled – in part due to the Brexit Party splitting the Tory vote.

Both Mr Johnson and Sir Keir made three visits to Hartlepool during the campaign in a sign of the importance the by-election represents to their parties. 

Opinion polls suggested the Tories were on course to win the seat for the first time ever, with one survey putting the party 17 points ahead of Labour.

Mr Johnson sought to dampen expectations ahead of polling day as he said the contest looked like it would be a ‘very tough fight’. 

Sir Keir said during the campaign that his rebuild of the party would take longer than 12 months.

He stressed he had taken over the leadership after the party’s worst general election result since 1935 and ‘we’ve got to rebuild into the next general election – that is the task in hand’.

Sir Keir said: ‘This is the first test and we go into that test fighting for every vote, but I never thought we would climb the mountain we have to climb in just one year – it is going to take longer than that.’

However, losing ground instead of gaining it at 2021 elections would represent a devastating set of results for Sir Keir as he tries to lay the foundations for a general election victory in 2024.

He said on Wednesday that he would take responsibility, regardless of how the elections play out. 

‘I take full responsibility for everything the Labour Party does, including the elections whatever they are tomorrow,’ he said. 

‘And for me it’s very important – it’s the same approach I took when I was director of public prosecutions running the Crown Prosecution Service for five years, which is when things go right, the leader takes the plaudits; when they don’t go right, the leader carries the can and takes responsibility.’

Sir Keir’s allies last night said they were expecting civil war to break out in the party if election results are as gloomy as forecast by some opinion polls.

Alan Milburn, a Labour Cabinet minister under Tony Blair, told BBC Newsnight that the elections should not be seen as a referendum on Sir Keir’s leadership because it was ‘always going to be a long, hard battle back’ after the party’s 2019 collapse.  

However, Mr Milburn said ‘this is the time to inject new blood’ into the shadow cabinet because some of its current members are ‘barely visible’.

He warned the party is in a state of ‘crisis’ and said: ‘The truth is that the Labour Party, and social democratic parties, they need to reinvent themselves. 

‘It’s not a question of just rebuilding – it’s a process of reinvention. There needs to be a big programme change, a big policy change and I think a big procedure change.’ 

Shadow public health minister Alex Norris said Labour did not expect to recover from its 2019 general election loss within 18 months.

Asked whether Sir Keir would be to blame for a defeat in the Hartlepool by-election, Mr Norris told Sky News: ‘No, not in the slightest. Let’s not prejudge it, for one. 

‘But what Keir is going to be very clear about, what we are clear about as a Labour Party is that this is going to be a no-excuses election for us.’ 

But in a sign of the discontent on the Labour left, MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle appeared to mock the party’s attempts to change its image.

He said: ‘Good to see valueless flag waving and suit wearing working so well… or not?’

The comment is a reference to a leaked strategy document which suggested Labour must make ‘use of the flag, veterans, dressing smartly’ to win back voters in ‘Red Wall’ seats in the party’s former industrial heartlands.

Bullish Conservative MPs who had been on the ground in Hartlepool claimed they had noticed a ‘clear swing’ towards their party as they predicted a bad set of results for Sir Keir. 

‘If you thought the bottom of Labour was Corbyn then you are wrong,’ one told MailOnline. 

Labour activists doorknocking in the constituency sounded relentlessly glum. 

‘We are suffering from Long Corbyn,’ one senior figure said in a grim coronavirus analogy. ‘It is going to be really difficult… we will find out tonight whether we have hit bottom.’

The elections came after Mr Johnson faced a number of weeks of damaging headlines over the Covid crisis, a Whitehall lobbying row and controversy over the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat.

Many senior Tory figures believed the rows were only of interest in the ‘Westminster bubble’ and they will be hoping that they are proved correct after the nation went to the ballot box.

Meanwhile, in Scotland the SNP will be hoping to have strengthened its position in Holyrood as Ms Sturgeon pushes for a re-run of the 2014 independence referendum.

A number of opinion polls in the run up to ‘Super Thursday’ suggested the SNP was on course to win a majority.

Ms Sturgeon believes winning a majority would give her a mandate to hold another border poll.

Mr Johnson has repeatedly rejected calls for another independence vote, arguing the first one was supposed to be a once in a generation event.

But Ms Sturgeon believes an SNP majority would force the PM to reconsider. 

The SNP leader said after the polls closed tonight that it had been ‘an election like no other’ as she laid down the gauntlet to Mr Johnson on independence. 

She said: ‘At this election the SNP have also offered the people of Scotland the opportunity to choose their future once the Covid crisis has passed. 

‘If, when the ballots are counted, there is a parliamentary majority for that choice then when the crisis has passed that democratic mandate must be respected.’

Authorities have found it difficult to predict when results will come in because they are unsure how long counting will take because of social distancing requirements.    

The results of all of the UK’s elections are not expected to be finalised until Monday. 

Most of the seats in the Holyrood election are expected to count during the day on Friday, with results starting at lunchtime and peaking in the evening. 

However, some areas are expected to count votes during the day on Saturday, with results due from lunchtime. 

Results from the eight regional proportional representation top-up seats are expected on Saturday night.              

Counting for the Welsh Assembly elections is expected to take place on Friday with results in the afternoon and evening. 

In London, the result of the race for City Hall may come on Saturday but it could potentially be Sunday as Labour incumbent Sadiq Khan tries to secure a second term by defeating Tory rival Shaun Bailey. 

The Tories are expected to find out on Friday night if Ben Houchen has held on as Tees Valley mayor, in what is seen as a key race and a barometer for how the party is performing in the former ‘Red Wall’ constituencies that Labour lost to the Tories in the 2019 general election. 

The parties will face another by-election if Labour MP Tracy Brabin succeeds in her bid to become West Yorkshire mayor, as expected.

It means she will stand down from her Batley and Spen constituency, which she held in 2019 with a small majority of 3,525 over the Tories.

Labour figures have suggested the party could delay holding a by-election until the autumn in a bid to avoid losing another brick in the ‘Red Wall’. 

The results of 39 police and crime commissioner elections in England and Wales are expected to be announced across Friday, Saturday and Sunday.