PETER Mandelson's elevation to Europe presents Labour with a big headache in Hartlepool.

The local party has had an extremely chequered recent history - its low point being losing the mayor's post to a man in a monkey suit - and, like Mr Mandelson himself, has a fraught love/hate relationship with the people.

Yesterday, Mr Mandelson pledged to keep a base in the town. He felt regular trips back would help him keep his feet on the ground after the high society of Brussels.

We hope he keeps this word, for while he has transformed the people's party quite brilliantly, he can develop blindspots that drive ordinary people to distraction.

This by-election would seem a godsend for Robert Kilroy-Silk and his UK Independence Party (Ukip). Ukip has courted Hartlepool in recent years with some success, as June's elections showed.

The by-election will hog the national headlines, and victory would give Mr Kilroy-Silk eight months of excellent propaganda before the General Election.

For Labour, the worry is that the presence of figures like Kilroy-Silk will turn the by-election into a circus.

In such an atmosphere, a young, urbane Labour candidate parachuted in from London in search of a safe seat would be disastrous.

Labour's first priority should be to find a candidate who is rooted if not in Hartlepool then in Teesside or Durham and who can re-connect the party with the people.