Who Is Standing for Election in Hammersmith?

---

Meet the candidates from the three main parties hoping for your vote

Candidates from the three main parties are hitting the campaign trail in the parliamentary constituency of Hammersmith, following confirmation that there will be a General Election on 12 December.

In the previous General Election in June 2017, Labour's Andy Slaughter increased his majority by 13.9%, winning 63.9% of the vote - a total of 33,475 out of a total of 52,352 votes.

At that election, Hammersmith constituents came out in force, achieving a very high turnout of 71.9%.

Will it be as high this time round, as Andy Slaughter is challenged by two new faces from the Conservative and Lib Dem parties?

Andy Slaughter is a familiar face in Hammersmith, having served as MP since the constituency was created through boundary changes in 2010. Before that, he was the MP for Ealing, Acton Shepherd’s Bush from 2005 to 2010 and Leader of the Hammersmith and Fulham Council.

Andy was born in Fulham and educated at Peterborough Primary School on Clancarty Road, SW6. At 11, he went to the independent Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, and then to the University of Exeter. For the next 16 years he lived in Fulham before moving in 1998 to Askew Road in Shepherd's Bush.

Until he became an MP, he was a practising barrister and has been a member of the management board of Hammersmith & Fulham Law Centre for over 20 years.

In the House of Commons, Andy joined the Labour frontbench in 2010 as Shadow Justice Minister and then in 2016, he becam Shadow Minister for Housing and Shadow Minister for London. He was sacked from the front bench in June 2017 for voting in support of the UK’s continued membership of the Customs Union and Single Market. He continues to work for continued close links with the EU and a People’s Vote on the deal negotiated by the Government.

Find out more about Andy and his priorities here.

Xingang Wang has been selected as Prospective Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Hammersmith for next General Election.

Xingang started his career first as a civil engineer, and is now a financial consultant. He was educated at Imperial, Oxford and Harvard and has stood twice previously for Parliament. Hi is also a magistrate.

Xingang says: " I stood for Member of Parliament as the Conservative Party Parliamentary Candidate for Manchester Central in the 2015 and 2017 General Elections. I managed to increase the total number and the share of votes, and came second. This is the best result since 1987.

" I was born and raised in mainland China and came to England after my university degree in 2001. I am interested in politics and I believe in hard working, education and family, which are key conservative values. Politic is a very good way to meet and work with people who share the same values as you. I do lots of number crunching in the office, and outside of work I volunteer as magistrate and local councillor to give back to the community. "

The father of three adds: " Apart from my political life and being selected as the Conservative Parliamentary Candidate for Hammersmith, I’m also a husband. I was the luckiest man on earth to get married to Mrs Wang 11 years ago."

Find out more about Xingang's campaign on his website.

Lib Dem candidate Jessie Venegas was born in Mexico but grew up in Colombia and Canada. She has lived in the United Kingdom for 12 years.

Jessie joined the Liberal Democrats during the European Referendum because she didn’t have the right to vote. She became a British citizen shortly after the referendum and exactly a year later she stood as a candidate in a local election. Most recently, Jessie was the candidate in the Local By-election in Fulham Broadway where the Lib Dems achieved a 22% swing achieving 30% of the vote and pushing the Tories into third place.

She read Mass Communications and Political Sciences at McMaster University in Canada, gained an LLB in Law from the University of Birmingham and an MSc in Teaching and Learning from Oxford University and is now a teacher at a college in Central London.

Jessie teaches A level politics and Law at a local college but recently went part-time to work as a research assistant and caseworker for Irina von Wiese in the European parliament. She has been instrumental in the campaign to lower to cost of citizenship in order to fight for fairer voting rights. Jessie cares deeply about local issues in particular education, environment, knife crime and the voting rights of EU citizens.

Find out more about Jessie's Twitter account.

November 4, 2019