Full list of candidates confirmed for Erdington by-election after death of Jack Dromey

The Erdington by-election is being held on March 3, and the full list of candidates has now been confirmed.

The 73-year-old Labour MP died on January 7 after serving since 2010 and was praised by parliamentary colleagues in the Commons last month.

Labour will be hoping to retain the seat that Mr Dromey won with a majority of 3,601 in 2019, while the Conservatives will want it to go the way of Birmingham Northfield which switched from red to blue in 2019.

The Labour candidate has been named as Councillor Paulette Hamilton – Birmingham City Council cabinet member for health and social care – following a virtual hustings in January.

The Conservatives will be represented by Councillor Robert Alden, the leader of the Conservative group on the city council, who will be running for the seat for the fifth time in a row.

The Liberal Democrats have put forward Lee Dargue and the Green Party candidate is Siobhan Harper-Nunes. Reform UK – formerly the Brexit Party – have selected Jack Brookes while Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition chair and former MP and Coventry city councillor Dave Nellist will also be running.

Michael Lutwyche – a long-time supporter of Justice for the 21, the campaign group representing victims of the 1974 Birmingham bombings – will be running as an independent candidate.

The full list of candidates is as follows:

• Robert Alden – Conservatives

• David Laurence Bishop – Militant Bus-Pass Elvis Party

• Jack Brookes – Reform UK

• Lee Dargue – Liberal Democrats

• Paulette Hamilton – Labour

• Siobhan Harper-Nunes – Green Party

• Clifton Holmes – Independent

• Michael Lutwyche – Independent

• Mel Mbondiah – Christian Peoples Alliance

• Dave Nellist – Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition

• Thomas Peter O’Rourke – Independent

• The Good Knight Sir NosDa – The Official Monster Raving Loony Party

Erdington had a population of 97,778 in the 2011 census – making it the third least populous of Birmingham’s 10 constituencies.

An Office for National Statistics estimate in 2017 put the population of Erdington up to 103,200 – while in 2019 the number of people registered to vote was 66,148.

A city council document from 2015 states 34.7 per cent of Erdington’s population are aged 24 and under, resulting in the Erdington constituency having the third lowest proportion of young people compared with the other constituencies.

Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) groups make up 26.9 per cent of the total population according to the council profile – below the city average of 42.1 per cent but above the national average of 14.6 per cent.