James Forsyth

The Tories have taken Hartlepool on a remarkable 16 per cent swing from Labour. The Tories saw the biggest increase — 23 per cent — in a governing party’s share of the vote in a by-election in the post-war era. Labour has been trounced in a seat that has been theirs since its creation in 1974. Labour’s defeat shows that Keir Starmer is nowhere near stopping the party’s bleeding in the red wall. It suggests that the 2019 election was not a freak result driven by voters' desire to get Brexit done and their fear of Jeremy Corbyn but rather part of a realignment of English politics — and that things might get even worse for Labour in these areas. Any hopes that voters would simply snap back to Labour with Brexit done and Corbyn gone have been dashed.

The Union faces two simultaneous challenges in Northern Ireland and Scotland that both look set to worsen in the coming years. In Northern Ireland, the immediate problem is that Brexit has disturbed the fragile balance there. (A more persistent problem is the fact that after the Good Friday agreement, the Democratic Unionist party and Sinn Fein replaced the more moderate Ulster Unionists and the Social Democratic and Labour party as the main Unionist and Nationalist parties.) The debate over where various borders should go has turned into a question of identity. Unionists argue that the UK government’s agreement to create half a border in the Irish Sea threatens Northern Ireland’s place in the United Kingdom.

We have two years of elections on Thursday. But in England, the Hartlepool by-election is fast becoming the defining contest. If the Tories take the seat, which has always been Labour's, it will show that Keir Starmer hasn’t stopped the bleeding for Labour in the red wall. It will indicate that the realignment of English politics is continuing even without Brexit and Corbyn. A Tory win would suggest that the 2019 general election was not a freak result or a unique product of voters’ desire to get Brexit done combined with their concerns about Corbyn, but rather part of a substantial shift in the electoral geography of England. Hartlepool turning blue would precipitate a Labour crisis.

Arlene Foster has been forced out as DUP leader because of Unionist anger about the Northern Ireland protocol. She is blamed for being far too trusting of Boris Johnson. Her party’s anger with her has been compounded by how it has fallen in the polls since the protocol started being implemented. But as I say in theTimes this morning, the protocol isn’t even yet in full effect. If the protocol were to be implemented in full, Unionist opposition towards it would escalate to the next level. Next year’s Stormont election would turn into a proxy referendum on the protocol, with unionist parties arguing that if they can get a majority, they can vote to scrap it.

When Boris Johnson parted company with Dominic Cummings at the end of last year, it was inevitable there would be trouble further down the line. To pick a fight with one of Britain’s most formidable campaigners and his allies was always going to have consequences. It’s now becoming clear what they are. Some of the revelations from Johnson’s enemies are quotable: for example, the allegation that he said in private he’d rather let ‘bodies pile high’ than allow a third lockdown. But what he said in anger, or what he considered doing, matters a lot less than what he actually did. That’s why the most serious question he’s facing is about the financing of the renovation of the Downing Street flat.

Simon Case was determined not to make news at his select committee appearance today. But his sheer desire not to make news told a story in itself as the Commons Public Administration committee got increasingly frustrated with him. The row over who is responsible will rumble on Case dodged a string of questions on the lockdown leak inquiry and then declared, ‘What I can say I have already said to the committee.’ Case did, though, reveal a couple of things. First, it will be weeks not months before the inquiry concludes and the reason he couldn’t say much on it was that while the leak was not criminal, the investigation is using techniques he can’t talk about it in public.