Portrait

Tory Tees Valley mayor, Ben Houchen, embodies our political realignment. Sebastian Payne explains how his pragmatic, hands-on economics can lend substance to Boris Johnson’s agenda

ILLUSTRATION BY TIM MCDONAGH

Yarm high street was slippery and congested. On a dreary May afternoon, rain cascaded across the cobbles and the traffic hit a standstill. All attention in the northern English market town was centred on two figures in blue suits: one stocky, the other tall and broad. The pair darted from punter to shop, engaging with teenagers on their lunch break and tackling perplexed shoppers as they tried to duck both the damp and close social contact.

Those who spotted Boris Johnson asked for a selfie, or gasped as he walked by. But thanks to an ill-fitting waterproof, the prime minister was not immediately recognisable. No one present had any doubts about who the companion was, however. Often remarking on his efforts to save the local airport, voter after voter pledged to re-elect the mayor of Tees Valley for a second term. And they did: on the same day that Labour was hammered in the Hartlepool byelection, the shock narrow winner of the Tees Valley mayoralty from four years ago was returned—with a breathtaking 73 per cent of the vote. Ben Houchen’s victory exceeded the already high expectations. The Spectator, overegging it slightly, dubbed him “the most popular politician in the country.” But certainly no politician more dramatically embodies the extraordinary political realignment Britain is living through.

In Labour’s postmortem as to why Johnson’s Tories were gaining fresh northern ground after a year of pandemic chaos, the party’s campaigners reported the same thing: “the two Bs,” Boris and Ben. Though it dismays many on the liberal left, the Etonian premier’s popularity in Labour’s former northern strongholds is now an established electoral fact. Less familiar to outsiders, however, is the even higher regard in which “Ben” is held among the voters in County Durham and the top postindustrial corner of Yorkshire.

There was a third B too, of course: Brexit. Sixty-five per cent of the Tees Valley backed leaving the EU, which provided the Tories with an opening to be heard in the region for the first time in decades. Houchen has seized that moment and forged a new style of conservatism—and governing. There is much liberal unease about so-called “pork-barrel politics” at present. But as one Yarmite put it on that inclement afternoon, “he’s the first politician in decades who’s actually delivering for us.”

While no one (including Johnson) seems entirely sure what Johnsonism is, the 34-year-old offers a distinct— and winning—political economy. Well before the so-called red wall of Labour constituencies was demolished in 2019, Houchen had already chipped out the first brick. And the 2021 local elections confirmed that the post-referendum realignment of politics—the focus of my new book Broken Heartlands—is deepening, not unwinding, now that Brexit is “done.” He personifies the party’s new strength, and is the harbinger of its future direction.