Labour MP Ian Byrne reselected as Liverpool West Derby candidate

An MP who had faced a battle to be chosen to represent Labour at the next election has been reselected as the party's candidate.

Ian Byrne, who has represented Liverpool West Derby since 2019, was announced as the winner of a ballot on Sunday.

He had had to compete for the seat after losing a series of votes in local constituency branches.

Mr Byrne and the Labour Party have been approached for a comment by the BBC.

The MP had faced competition from Liverpool councillor Anthony Lavelle and Lancashire councillor Kimberley Whitehead.

During the contest, he accused Mr Lavelle's supporters of "intimidation", a claim which was strongly denied by the councillor's backers.

Mr Byrne was first selected to replace the previous Labour MP Stephen Twigg in early 2019.

At the time, he was a local ward councillor in Everton and was a vocal supporter of then-party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

He is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group of backbench Labour MPs and is a familiar face on match days on Merseyside, collecting donations for the charity he set up, Fans Supporting Foodbanks.

In Parliament, he has campaigned for a right to food to be established in law and for the Hillsborough disaster to be added to the national curriculum.

Ian Byrne is part of the Socialist Campaign Group parliamentary caucus of Labour MPs - made up of MPs on the left of the Labour party.

Some Labour left-wingers, including supporters of the former leader Jeremy Corbyn, have claimed in recent months they are being frozen out of standing for the party at the next general election as Sir Keir Starmer seeks to remake the party in his own image.

But a Labour spokesperson previously said that the party's "due diligence is about weeding out candidates who could cause electoral damage".

However, the fact Mr Byrne was not automatically selected prompted criticism by Labour's left - including the group Momentum, who said that despite "a deeply flawed trigger ballot process which broke with basic principles of fairness", he had "roared back to victory".

They added that he had "also struck a blow... against an out-of-control Starmer machine willing to break Labour's own rules, disregard trade unions and attack its own MPs in the service of their right-wing purge".

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