Labour to call double by-election for same day
Party insiders believe the best hope of seeing off the challenge from the Conservatives and UKIP is to get the polls "over with".
Friday 20 January 2017 13:25, UK
Labour is to call two by-elections for the same day next month.
The party will move the writ to hold polls in the Labour-held seats of Stoke on Trent Central and Copeland on Monday, with votes being cast on 23 February.
The elections are being held after moderate Labour MPs Jamie Reed and Tristram Hunt, both critics of Jeremy Corbyn, announced they were quitting Westminster for jobs outside politics.
Sky News had already with party insiders believing the best hope of seeing off the Conservatives and UKIP is to "get them over with".
Mr Reed, who has been MP for Copeland for the last 12 years,
He kept the seat in 2015 with a majority of 2,564 over the Tories, who are already handing out leaflets to voters - many of them Sellafield staff - highlighting Mr Corbyn's opposition to nuclear power.
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The local party has selected councillor Gillian Troughton as its candidate, defeating pro-Corbyn favourite Rachel Holliday.
Mr Hunt, the former shadow education secretary, will become director of the V&A Museum after just six years as an MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central.
His seat - held by Labour since its creation in 1950 - will be a major electoral test for UKIP, whose leader Paul Nuttall is rumoured to be announcing his candidacy this weekend.
The seat - which used to be an industrial powerhouse but has seen traditional industries decline - saw a strong showing from UKIP in May 2015, finishing just over 5,000 votes behind Labour.
It will be a three-way fight between UKIP, Labour and the Conservatives, who finished a close third in the General Election.
But the result could be decided by how hard the Conservatives choose to campaign.
Recent by-elections in Richmond Park and Sleaford in Lincolnshire have seen the Labour vote splinter between Remainers turning to the pro-European Lib Dems and Leave voters backing UKIP.
Some Labour MPs believe Copeland is the more winnable seat for the party, given Mr Reed's long record as a local campaigner and concern about cuts to NHS services.
Mr Hunt warned about the challenge of Brexit in his farewell speech to the House of Commons, saying: "I represent a constituency that voted 70-30 to Leave the European Union.
"This division of opinion between the official Labour Party position and many of our heartland voters has served only to highlight some of the deep-seated challenges which centre-left parties are facing.
"What Brexit has done is exacerbate the divergence of priorities between what the Labour voters of Cambridge want, and those in Redcar, Grimsby or Stoke-on-Trent.
"Keeping a metropolitan and post-industrial coalition together is no easy task."