Dan Norris, the current Mayor of the West of England, has been selected as the Labour candidate to contest the new North East Somerset and Hanham seat at the next General Election.
West of England Mayor, Dan Norris | Photo © WECA
Mr Norris, the former Wansdyke MP, lost his Westminster seat to Conservative Jacob Rees-Mogg in 2010 when the North East Somerset constituency was created.
The local Labour Party selected Mr Norris for the rematch on Friday, 10th May.
Members selected Mr Norris over the two other candidates, Rebecca Montacute and James Coldwell.
In a message to members of the constituency party, Mr Norris thanked them for putting their trust in him.
He said: “It is a great honour and responsibility. We live in a super marginal seat and so now the hard work begins in earnest.”
Mr Norris officially launched his campaign in Keynsham on Sunday.
The new constituency will be radically different to the current North East Somerset seat.
Only half of the existing area will be in the new constituency, with Bathavon North moving over to the Bath constituency and Radstock and Midsomer Norton joining the new Frome and East Somerset constituency.
The ‘Hanham’ part also includes the South Gloucestershire wards of Longwell Green, Bitton and Oldland, and Parkwall and Warmley.
They are currently in the Kingswood Parliamentary constituency which disappears at the next General Election but was won at February’s by-election by Labour’s Damien Egan after Tory Chris Skidmore stood down.
This story originally appeared in The Week In, our sister title.
