Labour deputy police boss to vie for Parliament in marginal seat
A WEST Midlands Police chief is bidding to become the next Labour MP for Birmingham’s Northfield seat.
Tom McNeil currently serves as the region’s Assistant Police and Crime Commissioner (APCC), working under elected Labour PCC Simon Foster.
Mr McNeil has now announced his ambition to enter Parliament and hopes to stand as the Labour candidate for Northfield at the next general election, currently scheduled for May 2024.
He is putting himself forward for selection as the prospective Labour candidate in the key ‘red wall’ seat and, if successful, will go up against current Conservative MP Gary Sambrook.
In his political police role, Mr McNeil, who grew up in Birmingham and still lives there with his partner and baby daughter, has been a fierce critic of the Tory Government over its funding of the police and, more recently, the cost of living crisis.
He said he was standing because he wants to “make sure that Northfield’s future generations have the same opportunities he was given” and that as an elected MP would push for “a new era of investment in education, healthcare and the highskilled jobs of tomorrow”.
He cut his political teeth by standing in the safe Tory seat of Meriden in 2015 and 2017, coming a distant second on both occasions, before becoming APCC.
He now has a more realistic chance of entering Parliament in Northfield, where Labour will be hoping take back the seat they lost to the Conservatives in 2019.
It had previously been a Labour seat since 1992 and was one of a number of Midlands and northern seats to fall to the Tories as Boris Johnson secured a huge majority.
Mr Sambrook has a slender majority of just 1,640 and the seat will be a key target for Labour at the next election.
A YouGov poll this week suggesting the Conservatives could be heading for a major collapse listed Birmingham Northfield among the seats which could turn red.
Mr McNeil, who has a Master’s degree from Cambridge University, is a qualified lawyer with experience in the business and has worked for charities, confirmed he would stand down as APCC if elected to Parliament.
He said: “The British economy and our communities can only thrive when we have high-skilled and well paying jobs.
“And we can only have that when we have an education and health service that receives the investment it deserves.
“The Conservative Government takes a short-sighted view to public finances, and as the Labour MP for Northfield I would champion a far more ambitious and optimistic future for the region and city.”