Claire Sully has been selected by local Liberal Democrats as the party’s candidate at the next General Election for the new Bridgwater parliamentary seat which will include Burnham-On-Sea, Highbridge, Berrow and Brean.
The Somerset councillor has been formally selected and announced by the party this week.
It follows an announcement earlier this year from The Boundary Commission that constituency boundary changes will result in Burnham-On-Sea, Highbridge, Berrow and Brean moving out of the existing Wells constituency and into a new Bridgwater constituency by the next general election.
The Lib Dems say Claire Sully is a community champion and hardworking elected Somerset councillor who has received “overwhelming support” from colleagues to contest the next election in the newly-created Bridgwater constituency.
Claire says she is keen to continue “the winning Lib Dem momentum in Somerset following their outstanding results at last year’s local elections.” The party won a majority on Somerset Council, with Claire winning more than 50 per cent of the vote in her Mendip South division.
She describes the Bridgwater constituency as “one of the most exciting in Somerset” and believes the Lib Dems are the front runners to win the seat.
She says: “Following the recent Liberal Democrat parliamentary by-election success in Somerton and Frome, where the party won a massive swing to overturn a huge Conservative majority, we are the real challengers in the new Bridgwater seat.”
“That result followed other huge Liberal Democrat victories in Tiverton and Honiton, North Shropshire and Cheshire and Amersham, all of which were traditionally Conservative-held seats. In addition, Labour finished a distant third in the Somerset elections.”
“The impressive recent election record for the Liberal Democrats in Somerset and elsewhere has seen swathes of traditional Tory voters switch to the party.”
The announcement comes after Sir Ashley Fox was recently announced as the Conservatives’ candidate for the new Bridgwater and Burnham seat.
Under the boundary changes acros the UK, the total number of overall seats in the House of Commons will remain at 650 but the number of constituencies will increase from 533 to 543. The new boundaries are designed to make representation more equal, with each of the new seats having a population of between 69,724 and 77,062 people.
Bridgwater’s current MP Ian Liddell-Grainger will not stand in the new Bridgwater constituency, as we first reported here, since he is standing in the new Tiverton and Minehead seat instead.
