Today Hartlepool, tomorrow ... Tory

"knock loudly" at the former beauty parlour

The Conservative party rented a former beauty parlour on York Road, so had to improvise the office around rows of old washbasins. To the hilarity of their rivals, a note on the door in the early days advised visitors to "knock loudly", and although it was soon removed, an ominously forsaken calm prevailed. The shutters were usually down by 7pm.

One might have expected the Tories to show more concern to make up for lost time. More than six weeks after Mandelson's announcement, their candidate had still been mysteriously unforthcoming. There was talk of a crisis, and rumours were rife - it was a Central Office plot to damage Liam Fox, notionally responsible for the campaign; alternatively, it was a plot to discredit Michael Howard.

When a name was finally announced, the party put the delay down to its concern to "make sure we had found absolutely the right candidate". Jeremy Middleton is unquestionably impressive; a self-made millionaire from Newcastle, 43, he is the only candidate to have previously stood for parliament. But his "rightness" was somewhat undermined by the string of names known to have declined the candidacy before him.

I called Central Office shortly after his selection.
"Yes, one of us will be appointed in the next 48 hours to run the show," a voice sighed. "Then they'll go and set up camp up there, I suppose, and put up the tents, and send up some outriders and redcoats and what not. And then I suppose we'll wait to be slaughtered."

Ghosts of grander days still graced the Tory HQ; the smart suits, the luxurious battle bus. Nothing of the sort elevated the Ukip campaign, which squashed itself into an old clothes shop at the other end of York Road, and had to make to do at first without even phone lines. The wild profusion of union flags suggested perhaps a village fete more than a political party, and the campaign got off to a wobbly start.

For the Tories to escape catastrophe, they had to convince their supporters that a vote for Middleton wasn't a waste. It was a feasible ambition, for local Tory voters are largely unfamiliar with tactical voting. As Kemp put it, "If you're going to be a Tory here, you might as well be proud of it, 'cause you ain't going to win anything." To this end, the Tory campaign settled on crime as its big campaign issue.

It wasn't a bad idea, for crime strikes a real chord in Hartlepool, and Middleton has a touch of John Major - a decent man, clearly clever. But out canvassing, his conversation often sounded like a business pitch to an investment bank, and matters weren't helped by his height. He had a tendency to talk down to voters, his nerves translating as impatience. The primitive challenge of asking poor, uneducated, elderly people for their support seemed to defeat him.

"What if I told you," he threw at them. "That I had a plan to take every single hard drug user off the streets of Hartlepool. Would that make a difference?" They nodded politely, and looked utterly perplexed. Fortunately for Middleton, few pressed him to explain how this policy would work, for when I did he soon unravelled on the detail. The more serious problem was that they did not appear to take it seriously.