Five candidates for Cheadle

Five people are in the running for the seat, which still comes into the marginal category despite Ms Calton raising her majority on May 5 from just 33 to 4,020.

Ms Calton died aged 56 on May 29 after a long battle with cancer.

Liberal Democrat candidate for July 14, Mark Hunter, the leader of Stockport Borough Council, starts the campaign with the advantages of high-party morale after May 5 successes in both Cheadle, and against Labour in nearby Manchester Withington.

But the Conservative candidate Stephen Day can rely on a high recognition factor as a Cheadle resident and the MP until 2001, when he was ousted by Ms Calton.

He was again defeated in this year’s General Election by Ms Calton, as was Labour by-election candidate Martin Miller.

Leslie Leggett is standing for Robert Kilroy-Silk’s Veritas Party, and John Allman is standing for Alliance for Change – Suffering Little Children.

Cheadle was the most marginal seat in the country in the General Election, and the constituency has rolled back and forth between the Liberal Democrats and the Tories for decades.

Years of untroubled Tory supremacy were abruptly ended when Cheadle was won for the Liberals in 1966 by Michael Winstanley – the television doctor.

His triumph was hailed as the “Orpington of the North” after the party’s famous London suburbia victory four years earlier.

But Tories fought back and ousted him in 1970.

The constituency was then cut in half by boundary commissioners and Dr Winstanley stormed back in the part that became Hazel Grove in February 1974 while Tories retained the shrunken Cheadle.

But they again swept Dr Winstanley out in October 1974.

They kept both seats for more than 20 years before losing Hazel Grove in their 1997 disaster year.

Cheadle narrowly followed in 2001.

Scotsman.com