Boris Johnson Seems Lost In North East England While On The Campaign Trail

"That's NOT Teesside."
Boris Johnson with an ice-cream outside The Whitley Whaler.
Boris Johnson with an ice-cream outside The Whitley Whaler.
Twitter

Boris Johnson appears to have left his map at home while campaigning in the north east of England ahead of Thursday’s crunch local elections.

The prime minister left his partygate woes in London on May Day bank holiday Monday as he was pictured on his official Twitter feed with an ice-cream and surrounded by young people taking photos.

An accompanying tweet read: “It was a fantastic day to be out campaigning in Teesside, where we’re delivering a massive programme of investment as part of our plan to level up the whole of the UK.”

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Twitter

The trouble is, as plenty were keen to point out, he wasn’t in Teesside.

As The Whitley Whaler fish and chip shop in the background suggests, the PM was in Whitley Bay, the seaside town on Tyneside – or on the River Tyne, not the River Tees.

“Erm...how to say this...?,” tweeted Labour deputy leader Angela Rayner. “That’s NOT Teesside.”

Erm…how to say this…?

That’s 𝐍𝐎𝐓 Teesside.#WhitleyBay pic.twitter.com/fxb7ZaQs5A

— Angela Rayner 🌹 (@AngelaRayner) May 2, 2022

The PM believes he was campaigning in Teesside. Actually he was in Whitley Bay North Tyneside. He doesn’t really care where he is or what he says. He doesn’t really care about who he meets or what they care about. Vote Labour on Thursday. pic.twitter.com/B5UOdK1yen

— Alan Campbell MP (@alancampbellmp) May 2, 2022

Whitley Bay isn’t in Teesside. pic.twitter.com/Ew3g1lpnaq

— Hannah Al-Othman (@HannahAlOthman) May 2, 2022

That’s Tyneside not Teesside… https://t.co/k9kn8ABV5Q

— Anna Turley 🌹💙🇺🇦 (@annaturley) May 2, 2022

first rule of the North-east, never mix up Teesside and Tyneside https://t.co/NDg5ZB9k4o

— Jim Pickard (@PickardJE) May 2, 2022

While both areas would have been part of the sprawling Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria, Whitley Bay today falls within the authority of North Tyneside Council, which goes to the polls on Thursday.

Middlesbrough, on the banks of the River Tees, is 40 miles away, and Teesside is split between County Durham and North Yorkshire for the purposes of local governance.

While there’s every chance Johnson himself did not pen the geographically-confused tweet, someone on Team Johnson appears to have spotted the error and deleted the indiscretion – replacing it with a tweet referencing the safer “north east”. But Twitter never forgets.

you can delete your tweet but Whitley Bay is still on Tyneside not Teesside pic.twitter.com/TE2n8iogX3

— Dan Hicks (@profdanhicks) May 2, 2022

This 👇 is not Teesside. This👇 is Whitley Bay, which is in *Tyneside*. Hastily deleted by the PM but still very, very funny. pic.twitter.com/5xtwcOmS0f

— Rachel Wearmouth (@REWearmouth) May 2, 2022
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