Blocking Jamie Driscoll as Labour’s mayoral candidate is ‘error’, says Unite

Mayor of North of Tyne was told on Friday he is not on the longlist to be party’s candidate for North East

The Labour party’s decision to exclude a sitting Labour mayor from contesting a forthcoming mayoral contest has been described as a “major error” by Unite, the UK’s leading trade union.

Jamie Driscoll – often described as “the last Corbynista in power” since becoming the first mayor for North of Tyne since 2019 – learned on Friday that he had not made the longlist to be Labour’s mayoral candidate for the new north-east region.