ANDREW PIERCE: How Lord Houchen held on in Tees Valley

The atmosphere in Downing Street was unbearably tense yesterday morning.

After a string of horrendous overnight results in the local elections, Rishi Sunak‘s most trusted advisers were on the phone to the Tory camp in Tees Valley every 15 minutes.

They were painfully aware that a defeat for Ben Houchen, the Darlington-based mayor, would be the most likely trigger for backbench MPs to move against the Prime Minister.

By mid-morning, as even ‘true blue’ councils such as Rushmoor in Hampshire went Labour for the first time in 24 years, Sunak’s aides were panicking.

So when word came shortly after noon that Houchen had retained his mayoralty for a third term – with almost 54 per cent of the vote – the PM’s advisers gathered in his study in No 10 and Sunak, 250 miles away in his Yorkshire constituency, punched the air in exultation.

After a string of horrendous overnight results in the local elections , Rishi Sunak’s (pictured) most trusted advisers were on the phone to the Tory camp in Tees Valley every 15 minutes

By mid-morning, as even ‘true blue’ councils such as Rushmoor in Hampshire went Labour for the first time in 24 years, Sunak’s aides were panicking. Pictured: Boris Johnson

So how, amid plummeting support around the country, did this millennial Tory mayor manage to hang on to so much of his thumping majority?

The truth is that 37-year-old Houchen’s victory had nothing to do with the PM or Conservative Party campaign HQ. Lord Houchen, like the man who made him a peer, his hero Boris Johnson, is one of those rare political beasts who transcends party lines. 

His personal recognition factor was so strong that his campaign slogan – ‘Back Ben for Tees Valley Mayor’ – contained no reference to his party affiliation. Nor did the campaign leaflets put through people’s doors.

As he said in a video on Facebook: ‘I’m less interested in national politics, I am the mayor of Tees Valley. My priority is always the people of Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool.’ On one occasion, Houchen even tweeted: ‘I’m not whipped by any political party.’

That said, in the 29 votes he’s taken part in since joining the House of Lords, Houchen has – coincidentally or not – voted the same way as the Conservative whip every single time.

But the top Tory who Houchen sees as a mentor is not Sunak but Johnson. Indeed, Houchen has been dubbed the ‘Boris of the North’.

When he retained the mayoralty of Tees Valley in 2021, with 73 per cent of the vote – a hefty margin of victory normally associated with ballot-stuffing despots such as Kim Jong-un – Boris was Prime Minister. And following the fall of Liz Truss in 2022 after only 49 days, Houchen was one of the first high-profile Tories to call for Boris to return as PM.

Like Boris, he is resented by his enemies for the ease with which he connects with voters. While Rishi – the figurehead of a party consistently placed 20 per cent behind Labour in the polls – was kept well away from Tees Valley, it was no surprise to see Boris, who has been conspicuously absent from the campaign trail, pop up earlier this week in a campaign video for Houchen.

‘Look at the progress Ben Houchen has made,’ said the blond bombshell. ‘He’s got a fantastic vision. But above all he is a guy who does what he says he is going to do.’

There are other parallels between the two men. They both have a fondness for grand infrastructure projects.

For example, Houchen pledged to examine the feasibility of a 26-mile tunnel from Hartlepool to Redcar under the River Tees for cars, cyclists, freight and pedestrians.

When Boris was London mayor, around £43million of public money was spent on a ‘garden bridge’ scheme across the Thames; as PM, Boris proposed a bridge or tunnel linking Scotland to Northern Ireland at a cost of £209 billion or £335 billion respectively. Neither project saw the light of day.

Few expect the Houchen tunnel to come to fruition – but it was a big talking point on the doorstep and put pressure on Opposition politicians to support it. Then there are his plans for the biggest freeport in the country, which could create up to 17,500 jobs. Houchen also controversially took the loss-making Teesside International Airport into public ownership to keep it open. Labour had pledged to shut it.

But the top Tory who Houchen sees as a mentor is not Sunak but Johnson. Indeed, Houchen has been dubbed the ‘Boris of the North’

In Darlington a modern building is now the northern base of the Treasury, and a film studio was built on the site of an old bus depot in Hartlepool.

‘Ben is the poster boy for levelling up,’ one government minister proudly told me yesterday, a reference to Boris’s flagship policy of bringing prosperity to disadvantaged regions of England through investment in local communities. ‘Ben thinks big, and talks big, just like Boris. He campaigned on a big personal brand.’

Houchen says: ‘There are lots of people who say that they’re going to vote for me but they probably won’t be voting for the Conservative Party in the general election.’

In Tees Valley he was also helped by the fact that Reform UK decided not to run a candidate against him, a move which could have split the Tory vote.

But as one Boris supporter says: ‘Ben is a big picture candidate and doesn’t get bogged down in micro-managing projects. He is one of the few politicians who’s known by his first name and diehard Labour supporters support him. Rishi take note: we won Tees Valley because of Ben Houchen, not because of Rishi Sunak.’

A message that senior Tories will surely be pondering this weekend as they absorb the scale of their losses elsewhere.