Tony Lloyd MP has announced that he is to stand as an elected police commissioner for Manchester. He will hand his nomination papers to the Labour Party today. He will still need to be confirmed by party as its official candidate, but as he is currently the chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party, it's unlikely the official stamp of approval on this decision will be long in coming.
Lloyd was first elected as an MP in 1983. If successful in his bid to become Manchester's first elected police commissioner in the elections in November, he would have to stand down from his Manchester Central seat.
It's not a decision he's taken lightly. He said:
"It is an enormous decision for me to give up being the MP for people I have spent nearly thirty years representing in Parliament but I believe that we must have a commissioner determined to create not simply the most professional police force in Britain but one which is proud to police on behalf of the people of Greater Manchester and their priorities."
If he's successful, his departure from Parliament will trigger a by-election in a very safe Labour seat. It's also a seat where the Lib Dems came second in 2010, with the Conservatives a distant third, so a potentially interesting by-election scenario for the coalition parties, too. Between now and November, expect there to be a fair amount of jostling in the Labour Party to decide who may get to follow in this veteran MP's footsteps. Will a party insider be rewarded with the safe seat, and if so, who?
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