Fact File: Siôn Simon

PERHAPS the most striking thing Siôn Simon has done is stand down from a safe seat in Parliament to pursue his dream of becoming mayor of Birmingham.

After ten years as Erdington MP, including a brief stint as a junior minister, Simon resigned from Parliament ahead of the 2010 election.

He told the world he wanted to be elected mayor of Birmingham.

But after two years working to win Labour support in the city, his bid ended when the voters rejected the idea of a city mayor in the 2012 referendum.

Rumours have it that a shot at city mayor was his reward for giving up the Erdington seat for the influential Jack Dromey MP and, being loyal sorts, the Labour Party saw to it that he could return as a West Midlands MEP in 2014.

Now, thanks to the current devolution drive, an elected West Midlands mayor is to be established after all and the 47-year-old Labour man finds himself in pole position with nine months to go.

Born into a Welsh-speaking family, his parents were teachers. Simon grew up in Hamstead and Great Barr and attended Handsworth Grammar School.

Like many politicians of his generation, he is an Oxford PPE (politics, philosophy and economics) graduate.

Before entering frontline politics, he worked as an MP’s research assistant, a manager for Diageo/ Guinness and then as a freelance speech writer and newspaper columnist with, among others, the Daily Telegraph and News of the World.

He was also associate editor of the right-leaning Spectator magazine during the early New Labour era.