LABOUR appears to be clawing its way back in its once former heartland in the North East which was stolen away from it four years ago by a combination of Ben, Boris and Brexit.

In 2019, Labour performed catastrophically in the Tees Valley, losing four of its five councils and only clinging to the fifth, Stockton, by its fingertips.

In 2023, many bricks have been put back in the red wall, but Sir Keir Starmer has not completely rebuilt an impregnable fortress.

Labour did score a stunning victory with the Middlesbrough mayor, and it made extremely significant strides forward in Darlington and Hartlepool, but it fell painfully short in both towns of taking overall control.

And in Stockton, its hold is even more precarious as the Conservatives gained ground leaving the result so close it will not be determined until June when three outstanding seats will decide the largest party.

In the local elections in May 2019, when all of these councils were last contested, the unbridled Conservative successes gave them momentum. When Boris Johnson became leader, the December 2019 general election unleashed a Tory tsunami that swept from Redcar right through to North West Durham.

But now the issues that caused that tsunami are, before our eyes, working their way through the electoral digestive tract.

Brexit was a big one – Labour, encouraged by the then Darlington MP Jenny Chapman, was seen as blocking Britain’s departure from the EU which this Leave-voting area did not like. But now the beginnings of a reconciliation can be seen: in Hartlepool, the Ukip vote appeared to go back to Labour rather than the ReformUK candidates, and in Sunderland, the pro-EU LibDems made a gain that has turned them into the official opposition.

Jeremy Corbyn was another big issue back in 2019. The traditional Labour voters did not like his brand of politics and he forced them to vote .elsewhere. Mr Starmer has removed that unsettling, left-wing edge to the party.

But the lack of an all-conquering victory means that this doesn’t feel like a 1997 leap forward.

And, of course, in explaining the reversal, it must be mentioned that Boris is no more. In his heyday, his indefinable powers took the Tories to parts of Ferryhill, Bishop Auckland and Hartlepool that no other leader has been able to reach, and even a Labour gain of a Durham County Council seat from the Tories in Chester-le-Street tells us that Rishi Sunak does not have that same allure.

The Tories will be most disappointed to lose Darlington. They believed they had created a levelling up poster town: Treasury jobs, station investment, airport nationalisation and Towns Fund cash represent big steps forward. Mr Sunak was even famously pictured looking into a Darlo pothole and, magically, it was fixed.

But the voters perhaps thought there was too much development. From the leafy West End to the northern outskirts of Harrowgate Hill which is threatened by thousands of new homes in the Skerningham garden village and a huge spread of solar farms, the Greens polled well, won seats and could even be kingmakers.

The analysis piece in The Northern Echo after the 2019 local elections finished by saying that the biggest winner was a man who didn’t stand: Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley mayor. As the head of the combined authority of five councils, he had witnessed a Labour clear-out from his cabinet with four replacements being people not philosophically opposed to what he was doing.

But this morning, when all the dust settles, the deals are done and the conversations are had, there won’t be any fellow Conservatives in his cabinet; there may even be a full slate of Labour leaders. In US politics, they’d call a president hamstrung by such an outcome “a lame duck”, which may be a little harsh in the Tees Valley, but Mr Houchen has certainly had his wings clipped.