WITH regard to the selection of a candidate to replace John Denham, Southampton Labour Party can do without the unsolicited advice of Paul Wheeler (Daily Echo, Letters June 5), or anyone else for that matter.

All the candidates are very worthy and very experienced, so I cannot understand why Rowenna Davies seems to be the target for an anti campaign that appears to be media-led. The lady in question is a councillor, and has studied politics at Oxford; where she comes from is irrelevant.

If it were pertinent, then the great majority of our most famous politicians would not have made it to Westminster. Winston Churchill for one, was first elected for Oldham in 1900, hardly a local.

Comments by Paul Wheeler and others are tendentious. I am sure the local Labour Party will select the right candidate on ability and dedication, attributes which all of those standing have in abundance.

So please accord them all a level playing field, so that the successful candidate is chosen on merit and not because others are eliminated by denigration.

Just the view of a member of over 60 years.

MR D R SMITH, Southampton