Jamie Driscoll clashed with a Labour frontbencher on Wednesday in the ongoing war of words over the North East mayor job.
A feud erupted last Friday after the left-wing Mr Driscoll was omitted from the party’s longlist of candidates to stand for mayor of a new combined authority area stretching across Northumberland, Tyne and Wear, and Durham. The sitting North of Tyne mayor has been pressing Sir Keir Starmer to let him back into the selection race.
His exclusion has been pinned on an event he held earlier this year with film director Ken Loach, who was previously expelled from Labour during efforts to root out anti-Semitism, though Mr Driscoll says he is yet to be given an official reason for the ruling of the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC). The mayor appeared on the BBC’s Politics Live on Wednesday lunchtime, where Labour frontbencher Nick Thomas-Symonds said there was no appeal process for Mr Driscoll to follow and that the “decision has been made”.
