Jackie Pearcey to fight Manchester Gorton for the Lib Dems

A tweet from John Leech brings news that Jackie Pearcey has been chosen to fight the Manchester Gorton for the Liberal Democrats.

Jackie was profiled by the Manchester Evening News in 2010:

Originally from Hartlepool, Jackie Pearcey started life on a council estate and has since lived in Leeds before coming to Manchester, where Jackie has been a councillor for Gorton North in since 1991 [she was defeated in 2012].

During that time she has been finance spokesperson, education spokesperson and more recently crime and disorder spokesperson. 

Jackie, a lifelong Liberal, has fought many campaigns as a councillor – from the campaign to allow war pensioners to have their war pensions disregarded for council tax and housing benefit calculations, to campaigns to protect local facilities ...

Outside politics, Jackie has both a degree and PhD in physics and worked in nuclear safety before switching to IT.

The faction-ridden Labour constituency party has yet to name a candidate for the contest, which was cause by the death of Sir Gerald Kaufman,