Winchester'S Labour Party is struggling to find a candidate to fight the next general election.

The Daily Echo has learned that a selection meeting of the local party last Thursday night refused to back the only shortlisted candidate and instead opted to reopen the whole procedure.

The candidate was Barry Jones from Farnborough, a former Rushmoor borough councillor who works at the air traffic control centre at Swanwick near Southampton.

Patrick Davies, the leader of the Labour group on the city council, said: "The rules are you have to have a choice of candidates but one by one people dropped out when they were chosen for other seats.

"When you have only one candidate the membership have a choice of whether they want to start again.

"We are not running out of time. The deadline is the party conference in the last week of September."

But with other constituencies snapping up candidates, Winchester looks like being left behind.

One party member, who asked not to be named, said: "It is getting to the point where nobody wants to take it on because of the Mark Oaten factor. Winchester is such a forlorn hope."

Mr Oaten will defend a majority of 9,634 from the 2001 election. Since his initial victory in May 1997 Labour has struggled to keep its share of the vote.

In the November 1997 re-election many Labour supporters voted tactically against the Tory candidate Gerry Malone and the Labour vote collapsed to 944.

In 2001 local solicitor Andrew Wyeth polled 3,498 but was still well down on 6,528 in May 1997.

Pundits are widely tipping May 2005 as the likely date for the next general election.