ConservativeHome's Seats & Candidates blog

Candidates selected for Warley and the two West Bromwich seats

Three candidates have been working as a City Seats Initiative team in the Borough of Sandwell since August 2008.

This week they have been selected for specific seats and are:

West Bromwich East: Alistair Thompson (pictured) - A communications professional, active in the party for about fifteen years, who is a councillor in Portsmouth.

West Bromwich West: Andrew Hardie - a GP in Birmingham who has been heavily involved in Project Umubano in Rwanda.

Warley: Jas Parmer - A former Bedford borough councillor who owns a post office there.

They are all Labour-held seats where the Conservatives are in second place: Tom Watson will defend a notional majority of 11,947 in West Bromwich East, Adrian Bailey will defend a notional majority of 9,821 in West Bromwich West, while John Spellar will defend a notionla majority of 11,206 in Warley.

Jonathan Isaby

West Bromwich seat selections abandoned

The two West Bromwich seats and Warley were, like Newcastle, due to select today but the selection meeting had to be abandoned after local Tories wanted a wider choice of candidates. They complained that letters to CCHQ had not been acknowledged and although tributes were paid to the existing City Seats candidates team, they wanted two local councillors to be included in the selection. That's all we have at the moment.

Three candidates adopted for City Seats Initiative in Bromwich

Andrew Hardie, Jas Parmar and Alistair Thompson have been adopted for the three Bromwich seats - Warley, West Bromwich East and West Bromwich West - as part of the City Seats Initiative. Congratulations to all three.