Labour mulls over Lincoln candidate for next election

Pundits are speculating over who will be Labour’s candidate in the next general election, with a current city councillor and a Cambridge-educated son of an ex-Lord Chancellor being touted as frontrunners.

As Prime Minister Liz Truss faces a hotbed of pressure early on in her Downing Street reign, the looming prospect of another early general election could soon be on the cards.

Criticism has been aimed at the Conservatives for not calling for an election right away, given that the landslide 80 seat majority the party currently holds was earned under a different leader, Boris Johnson, under a different manifesto.

The latest Redfield & Wilton Strategies election poll on Tuesday saw Labour hold a 15% lead over the Conservatives, with Labour seeking to get back into 10 Downing Street for the first time since 2010.

With this in mind, Labour will spend the coming weeks and months preparing for a possible election in the near future, with someone still needed to step in and represent the party in Lincoln.

Tomorrow’s MPs, a Twitter account run by journalist and writer Michael Crick, claims that two names have emerged as possible Labour candidates to take on Conservative seat holder Karl McCartney in Lincoln.

Rumours suggest that Hamish Falconer, son of The Lord Falconer of Thornton, is “interested” in representing Labour at the next election – though he would have to step back from his current work to do so.

Hamish is a member of Britain’s diplomatic service, and he has led the Foreign Office’s Terrorism Response Team across peace efforts in the likes of Afghanistan, Pakistan and South Sudan.

He was educated at Cambridge University, as well as Birkbeck and Yale, also working for the Department for International Development and the National Crime Agency on humanitarian response.

Hamish’s father Charlie is a British Labour peer and barrister, best known for serving as Secretary of State for Justice under Tony Blair from 2003 to 2007.

Another name mentioned by Crick was City of Lincoln Councillor Naomi Tweddle, who currently represents the Minster ward in the city.

Tweddle, who is on the Parking and Traffic Regulations Outside London Adjudication Joint Committee, is a lawyer with the United Kingdom’s largest trade union, Unison – working predominantly in public services.

Karen Lee, who won the Lincoln seat in parliament during the 2017 election only to lose it to old foe Karl McCartney two years later as part of the Conservative landslide victory across the nation, was not mentioned amongst the names likely to campaign for the Labour representative spot – though applications have not yet been advertised.

The former MP is currently a Lincolnshire County Councillor for the Ermine and Cathedral division, and she returned to her previous role as a nurse during the COVID-19 pandemic – but Lee did tell The Lincolnite back in 2020 that she would love to go back to Westminster in the future.

The Lincolnite has contacted Cllr Karen Lee, Hamish Falconer and Cllr Naomi Tweddle for comment.