LATEST PRESS COVERAGE OF HARTLEPOOL

Sydney Morning Herald

...Polls in several newspapers showed that Labour is either just in front of or narrowly behind the Conservatives and the resurgent Liberal Democrats, who could steal another supposedly safe Labour seat in the Hartlepool by-election this Thursday.

Guardian Letters


Green side of Hartlepool
Failing to mention the Green candidate for Hartlepool is a sad omission from a story about a byelection in which "the town wants a local, local MP" (Guardian Report, September 18). The Green party candidate Iris Ryder was born and bred in Hartlepool and has been a local activist for 30 years...

Guardian

Blow to Blair as Iraq vote looms
Tony Blair last night lost the first round of his battle to refocus Labour's energies on a vote-winning domestic agenda when the party conference in Brighton backed calls for an emergency debate on Iraq, the most divisive controversy of his premiership.

Unless party managers can broker a compromise resolution it could result in an embarrassing defeat when delegates vote on Thursday - the day of the important Hartlepool byelection - and some urge the early recall of British troops....

Guardian

Big guns turn their fire on Kennedy
Labour big guns yesterday insisted that Britain's historic two-party system makes the coming general election a contest between Labour and the Conservatives.

But they turned a lot of their fire against the Liberal Democrats ahead of Thursday's Hartlepool byelection.

Iain Wright, Labour's candidate in Peter Mandelson's old seat, is defending a 14,571 majority against the Lib Dems' Jody Dunn.

But he is fighting it like a marginal.

Signals from both sides - the Lib Dems say it will be close - suggest Labour is increasingly confident of victory.

But the party took no chances on the opening day of its Brighton conference....