Paul Waugh to fight Rochdale seat for Labour

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again. That appears to be Paul Waugh’s guiding mantra anyway, after the former chief political commentator for the i newspaper put himself forward for the Rochdale candidacy for a second time this year. He has now been successful and will stand as Labour’s candidate for the seat in the looming general election. All’s well that ends well, eh?

Waugh announced at the start of the year that he was stepping down from his top newspaper job to try to be selected for Rochdale after the death of veteran MP Tony Lloyd on 17 January — but the hack was unsuccessful after Labour’s Rochdale members picked Azhar Ali to represent the party at the by-election. However this quickly turned out to be a rather suboptimal choice. It transpired just weeks before the February poll that Ali had made some rather, um, controversial comments about the war in the Middle East.