SO confident are St Albans Lib Dems that their candidate will do well in the next General Election that they have become the first parliamentary constituency in England to select their contender.

At a packed meeting at Verulam School on Saturday, local Lib Dem members reselected Sandy Walkington as the party’s standard bearer in one of the party’s top target seats at the next General Election.

Sandy was the party’s candidate in 2010 when he leapfrogged from third place over Labour to finish a very close second behind Conservative Anne Main.

His 11 per cent increase in vote share was the largest for any candidate of any party in the east of England and the Lib Dems came closer to winning St Albans than at any time in the last 100 years.

Sandy said: “It is a tremendous honour to have been given the chance to finish the job. I am determined to make St Albans a Liberal Democrat gain at the next election,

“I have spent almost all of my adult life in and around the city, it is in my DNA. I am passionate about promoting and protecting its unique character.

“St Albans is the only place where I have sought public office, successfully at council level and coming a very close second in parliamentary elections.

“I have knocked on doors in every street in the constituency, meeting tens of thousands of local residents in the process. I have also visited and spoken to a host of local groups and organisations.

“All because I am determined that St Albans continues to be one of the best places to live, work and grow up in the entire country.

Commenting on Sandy’s reselection, Cllr David Yates, chairman of the St Albans constituency party, said: “We are delighted that Sandy is once again candidate.

“As soon as it became all but certain that the parliamentary boundaries will stay the same as in 2010, the constituency raced to select a winning candidate for 2015.

“It turns out that we have headed the field in picking our candidate and had the pick of the bunch to select from.

“Sandy won overwhelming support from our members against a strong field of credible alternatives – this local enthusiasm augurs really well for future electoral success.”