With the controversial and drawn out Halifax selection ending at the weekend, the Labour Party now has a full set of candidates in Labour-held and target seats.
Indeed, across the whole country there is only one seat that currently doesn’t have a Labour candidate – Beaconsfield – which will select a candidate on March 30th. Yet sadly it’s not a seat that Labour are likely to win; the party were third there in 2010 (almost 26,000 votes behind the Tories) and it’s notable for having been the seat where Tony Blair fought (unsuccessfully) a 1982 by-election. He also came third.
So does this mean that Labour’s selections are all done and dusted? Well yes – barring any Labour MPs choosing to retire before nominations close. That’s something which has happened all too often in the past, leading to candidates being imposed on seats, rather than selected by the members themselves.
Yesterday the Daily Telegraph claimed that Ed Miliband was on the look out for last minute seats for his “inner circle”:
“Ed Miliband is trying to parachute as many as eight members of the Labour hierarchy’s inner circle into safe seats ahead of the election in a bid to shore up his support in Parliament”
And the Telegraph suggests it knows which seats might open up:
“Three senior veteran Labour MPs were said to have told Labour chief whip Rosie Winterton that they would be willing to stand down after Parliament rises on Thursday.”
But there’s a catch:
“However each of the MPs – Alan Johnson, the MP for Hull and former Home Secretary, Jim Cunningham, MP for Coventry South and Gerald Kaufman, MP for Manchester Gorton – insisted they were planning to stand for re-election on May 7.”
Indeed one eagle-eyed tweeter had particularly compelling evidence that Johnson in particular will be staying on in Parliament:
@christopherhope FYI I signed Alan Johnson's nomination papers Thursday last week
— Matt Redmore (@MattRedmore) March 23, 2015
It’s not impossible to imagine MPs stepping down at the last minute, although it’s never a good way to select a new PPC, and there’s rarely a legitimate reason for an MP to announce they’re stepping down this late anyway – other than to give a favoured candidate an easy run. That inevitably ends up looking like the kind of stitch up that Miliband pledged to stamp out – and annoys members at a time when they need to be motivated to go out and campaign.
For now, we’re assuming that Labour’s selection process will come to an end on Monday in Beaconsfield. But we’ll keep you updated if – or when – an MP decides at the last minute that it’s time to go…
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