Could Hartlepool sever ties with Labour for the first time in 60 years?

With a popular Tory mayor, tribal loyalties are blurring ahead of a byelection in the English port town

Hartlepool's Headland juts out into the north sea like an eagle's talon. The grand Victorian terraces that line its seafront were once home to the town's founding fathers, who built Britain's most productive shipyard and attracted royal visits and enemy bombs.

These five-bedroom sea views now sell for half the price of a London flat but are well beyond the reach of the modern-day Hartlepudlian. Behind the once-mighty shipyard live some of the poorest families in Britain, a legacy of the decline after its last ship sailed off in 1961. It was also, perhaps not coincidentally, the last time Hartlepool sent a Conservative MP to Westminster.