Sheffield Central: Eddie Izzard, Paul Mason on six person Labour longlist for next General Election

Comedian Eddie Izzard and broadcaster Paul Mason join Rizwana Lala, Mike Buckley and city councillor Jayne Dunn on Labour’s longlist. Abtisam Mohamed, city councillor for Firth Park, is also on the longlist, and this morning received the endorsement of Paul Blomfield MP, the man she is hoping to replace.

Mr Blomfield has been Labour’s MP for Sheffield Central since 2010 and won the consituency in 2019 with a 27,000 majority. This advantage means this race to be chosen by Labour is likely to be the race to decide who the MP will be, though this is obviously not certain.

Candidates announced they had been longlisted on campaign pages and social media, with most candidates making those announcements over the start of this week. Eddie Izzard was the only candidate to announce she’d been longlisted last week, with one local Labour source saying she had “jumped the gun” by revealing she’d made the list, because other candidates “hadn’t heard either way”.

Abdi Suleiman, who arrived in Sheffield Central as a refugee when he was very young, did not make the longlist. He shared the news on Twitter, saying to his supporters: “Thank you for believing that a northern kid from a council estate had a message worth taking to the corridors of power and to the halls of Westminster.”

Labour List, who revealed the longlist, said “it is highly likely” the candidate chosen from this process will represent the constituency in parliament, come the results of the next General Election.