As a 30ft inflatable Boris Johnson bobbed above Hartlepool marina, the real prime minister addressed TV crews. It was May 2021, and for the first time in 54 years, the former Labour stronghold in north-east England had elected a Conservative MP. “I want to say a massive thank you to the people of Hartlepool for placing their confidence in us,” Johnson said.
Fourteen months later, he would find himself in Hartlepool again – this time for a farewell visit. It was “lovely” to have him back, the town’s MP, Jill Mortimer, said in a Facebook video. “We know how much he loves it here.”
For many in the town, the feeling was mutual. After lifetimes voting Labour, thousands of residents were enticed to switch their votes to Johnson’s Tories. Now he has gone, Liz Truss, who looks set to be announced as his successor this week, faces the task of keeping it that way.
Janet Holmes, a mother of six and retired NHS secretary, is among the swing voters she’ll be hoping to cling on to. The 73-year-old, who lives by the sea in Seaton Carew, two miles from the town centre, doesn’t much like politics and avoids watching the news. Even so, Johnson broke through, capturing something in her imagination that made her feel optimistic for Britain’s future.
In the byelection in 2021, after voting Labour her entire life, Holmes switched her vote to Conservative. “I swung that way because we’re Brexiteers and we didn’t want anything to stop that from going through,” she says.
Now that Johnson has gone, she remembers him fondly. “I really feel sorry for Boris,” she says. “I just think that he has had a really hard time with Brexit and Covid. It wasn’t his fault. All right, he might have made one or two mistakes – but we all do, don’t we? And I just don’t think they’ve been fair on him really. If it was anybody else they would have had the same problems.”
Truss hasn’t impressed her yet, and neither has her rival in the Conservative leadership race, Rishi Sunak. “I know there’s a man and a woman but not much more than that,” Holmes says.
However, based on her affection for Johnson, she thinks she’ll stick with the Conservatives in years to come. “I just want them to focus on the cost of living and keep Brexit going,” she says.
Among other Hartlepool voters, Truss is also yet to make a splash. “Not to sound ignorant, but I couldn’t even tell you what she looks like,” says Angela Defty, 58, who works in a sweet shop.
Painter and decorator Stephen Horner, 73, says he voted Tory in the last election because he was fed up with Labour. “Boris was a protest vote,” he says. “He was a bit of a clown at times. He’s done things and now he will live to regret it. I won’t be on the edge of my seat waiting for him to come back.”
Truss “has never really said anything” that’s stuck in his mind. But “it doesn’t matter who gets in anyway because they’ll do their own thing”, he says. Meanwhile, his electricity bill has rocketed. “I can’t see things getting any better.”
For David Moore, 61, the prime minister’s priority must be the NHS. “It’s terrible,” he says. “People have been waiting for ambulances for hours and hours and hours.”
He adds that Hartlepool “is a ghost town. It’s the electricity they can’t afford; the electricity and gas. There’s no future here for my grandkids.”
A seaport in the Tees Valley known for its historic ties to industry, Hartlepool is among the most deprived areas of the country. It boasts a scenic marina and is surrounded by beaches as postcard perfect as those in Cornwall. But the high street is struggling, with many businesses boarded up.
Child poverty in the town – at about 37.8% in 2020 – is growing rapidly, one of the fastest rates in the country.
Natalie Frankland, 34, a co-founder of the Hartlepool Uniform Recycling Scheme, says demand has been “huge”. “So far in the space of five weeks we have helped more than 300 families providing them with uniforms,” she says. Among those using the service are parents struggling to afford basic living costs. One mother of four, Frankland says, “broke down crying” after realising uniforms through the scheme would be free. “She was so relieved as she didn’t know how she was going to afford it.”
April Twidale, 35, a mother of one from West View, says Truss’s focus must be on the “financial situation”. Truss is yet to give details of any plans to address the cost of living crisis. “For benefits and people working, the money isn’t going up but everything else is,” Twidale says.
Anthony Errington, 59, who has lived in Hartlepool all his life, agrees that the cost of living crisis must be a priority. Last week, he began using a food bank for the first time.
He was always a Labour voter but lost faith in the party after the closure of the local hospital’s A&E department. “With what the Conservatives were promising I thought, ‘I’ll give them a try,’” he says. Johnson, he says, will be remembered for three things: “helping people, the Ukraine war and telling porky pies”.
He doesn’t know much about Truss, and doesn’t really care. “It doesn’t make much difference who they are,” he says. “As long as they start realising that they have to treat people fairly and stand up and tell the truth, it doesn’t bother me. The most important thing is honesty.”
• This article was amended on 5 September 2022 to clarify that it was Hartlepool hospital’s emergency department that closed, not the hospital itself.
