A RELATION of former Liberal Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has been chosen by the UK Independence Party to spearhead its eastern region assault on the European Parliament next year.

Graham Dines

A RELATION of former Liberal Prime Minister Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman has been chosen by the UK Independence Party to spearhead its eastern region assault on the European Parliament next year.

David Campbell Bannerman, who is already UKIP's candidate for Suffolk South against Tory Tim Yeo at the next General Election, heads the party's nominated list of seven candidates in the region contesting the five-yearly election to Europe.

In 2004, when the elections were last held, UKIP won two of the seven regional seats under the closed list system of proportional representation used for Europe. However both Euro MPs are not standing re-election. Jeffrey Titford is retiring after 10 years in Brussels and Tom Wise - who is currently the subject of a police investigation over allegations of financial irregularities - has been deselected.

A communications consultant, Mr Campbell Bannerman, who is 47 and single, is UKIP's deputy leader. He is a former chairman of the Bow Group, was a Tory councillor in Kent and was special adviser to Sir Patrick Mayhew when he was Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

The euro constituency covers six counties - Suffolk, Essex, Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire - and the unitary authorities of Peterborough, Luton, Thurrock and Southend-on-Sea. The region has seven MEPs, who are elected using a complicated formula of distributing votes among the political parties.

The party has chosen a 19 year-old student from Cambridgeshire as its fifth candidate. Amy O'Boyle, a student at Queen's University Belfast, is able to stand after the minimum age for parliamentary candidates was reduced from 21 to 18 in 2006.

The other six candidates on UKIP's list are: Stuart Agnew, a 58 year-old Norfolk farmer; Andrew Smith, 59, a City of London finance director who lives in Epping; Stuart Gulleford, 45, from Brentwood who is Jeffrey Titford's political adviser based in Chelmsford; Michael McGough, 59, who works in the City of London and lives in Epping; and Stephen Scott-Fawcett, 54, an equity partner from Norfolk.