Labour ‘deselects’ General Election candidate for North West Cambridgeshire constituency

Labour has deselected its General Election candidate for the North West Cambridgeshire constituency, the Peterborough Telegraph understands.
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Ed Murphy had been selected three weeks ago to contest the seat and recently handed in his nomination papers, but the Peterborough Telegraph understands the party has withdrawn its support for him.

Nominations for candidates close at 4pm today (Thursday) ahead of the election on December 12.

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Labour has yet to comment and say whether it will be putting up a new candidate.

Cllr Ed MurphyCllr Ed Murphy
Cllr Ed Murphy

The PT has also attempted to contact Mr Murphy.

Mr Murphy is a city councillor who represents Ravensthorpe.

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He previously ran for Labour in the neighbouring Peterborough constituency at the 2010 General Election, losing by 4,861 votes to Conservative Stewart Jackson.

Since that time he has been Labour’s group leader on the council for a year and was the party’s candidate to be the elected police and crime commissioner in 2012, coming second.

The Daily Mail claimed this week that Mr Murphy had deleted a tweet from July 2014 where he alleged that the Israeli armed forces were backed by the Conservatives on the city council. He is said to have posted: “Israel a terrorist state? And Israeli military (secretly backed by the Cons on Pboro Council) are international pirates.”

The tweet is said to have been accompanied by the image of the Israeli flag turned into a symbol of piracy.

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The Mail also claimed that he had shared the image on Twitter twice more in 2015 with the hashtag #MilitaryStatePirates.

Mr Murphy and the Labour Party have both been contacted over the deleted posts, with neither yet to comment.

The deselection of Mr Murphy would mean there are currently two confirmed candidates for the seat - Conservative Shailesh Vara and Nicola Day from the Green Party.

Mr Vara has held the seat since 2005 and won by 18,008 votes at the 2017 General Election.

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The Brexit Party had initially selected Liam Round to contest the constituency but he stood down last week, shortly before the party announced it would not fight any seats which the Conservatives won in 2017.

A full list of candidates will be announced later today.