In some local authorities in England voters will go to the polls to choose a directly-elected Mayor today. In Bedford, Copeland, Leicester, Mansfield and Middlesborough the Mayor is the key executive figure, supported by a Cabinet in contrast to most other councils, which are run either by a Cabinet made up of council members or a variety of service committees. There will also be an election for Mayor of the new North of Tyne Combined Authority after Newcastle-Upon-Tyne City Council, North Tyneside Borough Council and Northumberland County Council agreed a devolution deal with the Government.

The focus on individuals through Mayoral elections has the potential to deliver results against the grain of normal party politics, with independent community candidates having been successful- Copeland and Mansfield currently have Independent Mayors while Middlesbrough did until Labour won in 2015.

Should that trend continue in those councils, it could perhaps be a further indication of the Labour Party's key strategic problem, which could hinder their ability to return to government any time soon.

Winning the Copeland and Mansfield Mayoral contests will be a focus for Labour this year. Both were narrowly won by the Independent candidate over Labour in 2015. Since then, both areas which had been represented by Labour in Parliament for as long as anyone could remember, have elected Conservative MPs. Copeland was lost to the Conservatives in a by-election in February 2017 (the first gain by a governing party in a parliamentary by-election since 1982) and subsequently held by them at the General Election in 2017, when the Conservatives gained Mansfield also.

These losses are probably a major indication of the Labour Party's key strategic dilemma. In 2017 they gained 3.5 million votes and net 30 seats in Parliament. But their successes were largely confined to the south of England and metropolitan areas. They actually lost seats to the Conservatives in the Midlands and North of England, including Mansfield, but also seats in Derbyshire, Teeside, Stoke-On-Trent and Walsall.

What do these areas have in common, other than their geography? All are predominantly white, working-class industrial or former mining communities which voted heavily in favour of Brexit at the EU Referendum in 2016. At the General Election they showed little enthusiasm for Jeremy Corbyn and were largely at odds with Labour on Brexit at the referendum and since.

Labour's dilemma is how to keep together, and further build, a coalition of voters from Remain supporting metropolitan areas and Brexit supporting working-class areas in the Midlands and North of England. It is far from clear that they have found an answer to this. If they had the Party would likely be far more united behind a clear position on Brexit than it is.

There is no doubt that Labour would love to win the Mayoralties of Copeland and Mansfield to show the tide is turning back and that they are regaining support in key areas in the Midlands and North. Given the Conservatives' Brexit troubles and internal squabbles, conventional wisdom would suggest that the largest opposition party should be in for a strong set of mid-term election results.

But conventional wisdom went out the window of British politics some time ago. Recent polls and by-election results have not been as strong for Labour as they would hope- no doubt in large part due to the consequences of this dilemma and other internal issues like the anti-Semitism crisis. In this context, Labour strategists will probably be quietly surprised (and potentially shocked) if they are victorious in the Mayoral contests in Copeland and Mansfield (and possibly Middlesbrough too).