This afternoon Dan Lodge was selected as Labour candidate in Wimbledon over Eleanor Tunnicliffe, Abdul Ullah and Mark MacDonald. My congratulations go to Dan and my commiserations go the other candidates, Wimbledon had a high- calibre shortlist all of whom I've no doubt would've made superb candidates.

The battle is now on to oust Stephen Hammond at the next election and re-gain this seat for Labour.

Abdal is an elected Councillor and Cabinet member in Tower Hamlets. He has been short listed as a prospective Parliamentary candidate for Wimbledon CLP. This is a Tory marginal.
He has always been very positive and constructive about trade unions. He’s a hard working canvasser and campaigner. Pity he is in the GMB.

Sian Lloyd-Webber kindly provided the shortlist for the Wimbledon selection in the (long) thread on BAME candidates, so I've posted it here.

• Eleanor Tunnicliffe
  
• Mee-kuen Chong
  
• Dan Lodge
  
• Mark McDonald
  
• Abdal Ullah

Hustings scheduled for 2nd June.

Interestingly, three of those shortlisted have also applied for Putney, and, assuming that that CLP wants a shortlist of six, given that only three women have applied, Eleanor and Mee-Kuen will be shortlisted there.

It's a rather interesting dilemma though: it's pretty near impossible for someone to campaign effectively in two selections occurring at the same time, and if they lose Wimbledon (which selects first) it will, I suspect, be rather hard to convince members in Putney of a commitment to that constituency.

Of course, it could be argued that anyone applying for more than one constituency will have that problem - what makes this slightly more difficult is that these are adjoining seats selecting at the same time where connections across the two boroughs are decent and people will know what's going on in both.

Wimbledon Labour Party is looking for its own Roger Federer type.  During 1997 and 2001 Labour won Wimbledon only to lose it like many others in May 2005. Only a 2.5% swing is needed to bring the seat back to Labour.

Wimbledon and Richmond CLPs have announced their parliamentary selection timetables.