Labour has conceded defeat in the hotly contested Tees Valley mayor race with a result which could save Rishi Sunak from facing a vote of confidence.
Reports suggest that Conservative mayor Ben Houchen has held on in the north east but the swing to Labour would see the parliamentary seats won by the Tories in 2019 fall to Labour.
A Labour source has told ITV that “it’s a win for Ben Houchen, not the Conservative Party” and Labour “is on track to achieve the 12.5 percent swing in the region it needs to win back seats here.”
A Labour source told The Independent: “We would have needed a 23 percent swing to defeat Ben Houchen but we are well on the way to the 12.5 percent we would need t win every constituency in the region. This is little comfort to Rishi Sunak.”
Lord Houchen told The Independent earlier in the week that voters in the region have said they would back him on thursday but not support the Conservative Party in a general election.
He said: “There are lots of people who will come up to me and speak to me that say that they’re going to vote for me, but they probably won’t be voting for the Conservative Party in the general election.”
The result is one of the few positives for the Tories on a day of local election counts which see them on track to lose more than 500 of the 985 council seats they were defending.
Lord Houchen has been Tees Valley mayor since 2017 and Labour claim “he basically ran as an indepednent” ahead of the election on Thursday.
Tory MPs are debating behind the scenes whether to push for a vote of confidence in Mr Sunak’s leadership after polls continue to show they are heading for a catastrophic defeat at the next election.
However, many are waiting to see what happens with Houchen in Teesside and West Midlands mayor Andy Street whose result will be announced tomorrow.
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