THE LABOUR Party has named its elected mayor candidate for the West Midlands Combined Authority.
Siôn Simon, Labour MEP for the West Midlands, has been chosen as the official Labour candidate to stand for the newly created metro mayor position.
Mr Simon won favour among Labour Party members in Birmingham, Coventry, Sandwell, Walsall, Dudley, Wolverhampton and Solihull – beating his opponent, former Birmingham councillor Steve Bedser, by 2,718 votes to 1,099 votes.
Siôn Simon was MP for Birmingham Erdington from 2001 until 2010, when he stood down to campaign to be the Mayor of Birmingham – a role that was scrapped by Birmingham residents in a referendum in May 2012.
Since then, he was elected as a Member of the European Parliament for the West Midlands in the European Parliament elections of 2014.
The other main parties have not yet launched their selection processes.
Residents will go to the polls in May 2017 to elect the metro mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority.
