Ricky staying quiet as Kilfoyle stands down 

Tomlinson could face Labour's Luciana Berger in Wavertree; Peter Kilfoyle is standing down in Walton

The people of Wavertree are still waiting to see if TV star Ricky Tomlinson will stand as a candidate in the upcoming General Election.

The Royle Family celebrity and Liverpool comedy
hero has indicated he wants to face off against
Labour's high-profile candidate Luciana Berger,
who he has already criticised for her lack of local
knowledge. However, following a Socialist Labour
Party meeting at a hotel in Liverpool on Tuesday night, there was still no confirmation about Tomlinson.

Already the Liberal Democrats have selected Colin Eldridge to run in the seat, with Andrew Garnett standing for the Conservatives.

An announcement on Tomlinson is still pending and SLP leader, Arthur Scargill, told the Liverpool Echo: "This meeting has been a meeting to talk about the forthcoming election and the selection of constituencies and candidates. We have had a very good meeting and decided a policy in general terms, as we are doing in other parts of the country."

Tomlinson would not add to Scargill's statement, though as he left the meeting, he told the Echo: “I love Liverpool and love the people of Liverpool – that’s why I am so angry at this imposition [of Luciana Berger as a candidate]."

This news comes on the day that it was revealed that veteran Labour MP for Walton, Peter Kilfoyle, is to stand down at the General Election, bringing Liverpool firmly into the national election spotlight.

The former defence minister, who has been an MP since 1991, is believed to be stepping aside for health reasons. His seat in Walton was considered safe, after he won it with a majority of nearly 16,000 in 2005.

Kilfoyle was also recently critical of Labour for bringing in "outsiders" to fight seats in Liverpool, namely Luciana Berger.

In anticipation of the SLP selecting Tomlinson as candidate, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have been distributing campaign literature across Wavertree in what is shaping up to be one of the election's key battlegrounds.

The Liberal Democrat-produced 'newspaper' Liverpool News mocks Luciana Berger with the headline: "London Labour's Luciana: Who's Bill Shankly?", taking aim at the Labour candidate for her widely-publicised failure to know anything about the former Liverpool manager.

The Lib Dems also promise action on dangerous dogs following the death of four-year-old John-Paul Massey in Wavertree last year, and Eldridge pledges to fight to scrap university tuition fees altogether.

Berger recently responded to such leafletting by the Lib Dems, telling JMU Journalism: "The leaflets that people have brought me that they have put out across the constituency have been about attacking me personally, and that’s just not a tactic that I’m going to pursue. I think it’s very disappointing."

Berger's own leaflets feature some Liverpool students backing the Labour candidate from Wembley, who promises to move to the constituency if she is elected, pledging to "fight for Wavertree, its people, its priorities and its community".

None of the campaign literature from either party makes any reference to Ricky Tomlinson, who is still awaiting his election fate... or waiting to announce it.