The rise of the Teesside Tories

THE process of making a parmo is not for the faint-hearted. A chicken cutlet is pounded flat, breaded, deep fried, covered in béchamel sauce and a thick layer of cheddar cheese, then grilled. Served with chips it weighs in at 2,600 calories, slightly over the recommended daily allowance for a grown man. It is a hearty snack that Teessiders are proud of inventing. Little wonder Ben Houchen campaigned for the parmo to be given protected status, alongside champagne and feta cheese, during his push to become the region’s mayor.

It worked. A staunch defence of Teesside’s culinary heritage, coupled with a plan to nationalise the local airport and overhaul the police, was enough for the Tory candidate to shock Labour and become the first mayor of the Tees Valley Combined Authority last spring.

Since then Mr Houchen has revelled in his municipal empire, which encompasses 700,000 people and stretches from Darlington to Hartlepool. An avid Brexiteer, he has noisily campaigned for the local port to become a “free port”, with a carve-out from Britain’s customs regime. He controls an investment fund of more than £500m ($700m). Threats of compulsory-purchase orders have been issued to those in his way. “I’m everything that an MP is, but I also have executive power and a big pot of money to do it,” he says.

Two tasks face Mr Houchen, a stocky 31-year-old. The first is justifying the existence of the mayoralty, for which there was little public enthusiasm. Turnout in last year’s election was only 21%. Agreeing to have an elected mayor meant extra central-government funding, including £59m at the last budget. Andy McDonald, a local Labour MP, labelled it Hobson’s choice.

His second task is to turn Teesside more broadly Conservative. The river Tees is the historic border between North Yorkshire, a sea of rural Tory seats, and Durham, which is solid Labour land. In the general election last June, this political levee was expected to break in favour of the Conservatives. All the constituencies in the Tees Valley had voted to leave, one by as much as 70%. Mr Houchen’s surprise win a few weeks before, in May, suggested that the Tories’ time had come.

But a late Labour surge meant the breakthrough never came. “I never in my wildest nightmares thought Labour would increase their vote,” says Simon Clarke, who narrowly won Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland for the Tories for the first time. Mr Clarke’s breakthrough was offset by the Tories’ loss to Labour of Stockton South, a seat they had held since 2010. The stalemate leaves Teesside resembling British politics at large: a story of reorientation rather than revolution, with neither Labour nor the Tories able to break out.

To end the deadlock, the Conservatives have doused the area with political and financial capital. The chancellor has promised £123m to redevelop 4,500 brownfield acres on the south bank of the Tees. After the collapse in 2015 of SSI, a Thai-owned steelworks that had employed 2,200 people, the area was repackaged last year as the South Tees Development Corporation, under the aegis of the mayor. Although businesses such as the rump of British Steel remain, the area resembles an industrial graveyard with a defunct steelworks as a hulking metal tombstone.

It is here that the mayor’s combination of bully pulpit and real powers, such as compulsory-purchase orders, comes into its own. Mr Houchen has a simple message for landowners: “Play ball, or you can sod off.” Theresa May, the prime minister, came for the South Tees site’s grand opening last year. “I am not blowing my own trumpet,” says Mr Houchen, “but I am the Tory in the north with the largest electoral mandate.” There are six metro mayors in Britain, compared with 650 MPs. Their relative novelty opens doors to ministers.

Being a Tory mayor in Labour territory has its pitfalls. Mr Houchen must work with five Labour councils, which can be uneasy. Local MPs are sceptical about his plan for the airport, leading to the strange spectacle of Labour politicians—including the shadow transport secretary, Andy McDonald—opposing a Conservative-led plan for public ownership. “The airport is the only thing in this country he [Mr McDonald] doesn’t want to nationalise,” wails Mr Houchen. But most planned works, such as upgrades to Darlington’s railway station, are widely supported. Even the free-port plan is backed by local Remainer MPs such as Anna Turley (who notes that they are allowed in the EU).

Not everyone agrees with the strategy. Dragging heavy industry back to Teesside risks tying the area to its history rather than preparing it for the future, says Paul Swinney from the Centre for Cities, a think-tank. There is a tendency to wallow in the past: the fact that a Teesside firm built the Sydney Harbour Bridge nearly a century ago is mentioned more often than the fact that today the area hosts a laboratory 1km underground off the coast at Redcar that is involved in the search for dark matter.

Mr Houchen would not be the first local politician to overpromise. A former mayor of Middlesbrough vowed to turn the area into Dubai-on-Tees. Optimism, however, is what the area needs, says Mr Houchen. Now it his job to justify it.