ALL the candidates for the Cotswolds MP in the upcoming General Election have been announced.

Below is a run-down on each of the five candidates.

The Conservatives have re-selected Geoffrey Clifton-Brown who will be looking to extend his 25-year dominance in the Tory heartland.

He has won six elections during his time in office, he said: “I look forward to having a fair and constructive campaign.

“The Cotswolds deserves the strong and stable leadership that a Conservative MP can provide.”

A Conservative spokesman stated: “As a candidate, his experience and knowledge of the Cotswolds and its residents are second-to-none and he will continue to work hard to ensure that the Cotswolds’ voice is heard loud and clear in parliament.”

Meanwhile the Liberal Democrats – riding high on a convincing performance in the local elections – will be fielding Dr Andrew Gant.

Their hope is to improve on 2015’s performance by appealing to the Cotswolds electorate who voted ‘Remain’ in last year’s referendum.

Andrew is an esteemed musician and lectures at St Peter’s College in Oxford, he was appointed leader of the opposition on the city’s council earlier this year.

He lives in Oxford with his three children, he said: “It is a real privilege to have been selected by local party members as the Liberal Democrat candidate for the Cotswolds and I look forward to taking the arguments to the Conservatives in the event of a snap general election.

“A majority of people in the Cotswolds voted to Remain whilst Mr Clifton-Brown backed Leave – I want to hold him and his fellow Leave campaigners to account for some of the outrageous claims they made during the referendum campaign.

“As a school governor I have seen the damaging effects of the Tory funding formula. We need a fairer system, not expensive and divisive free schools and grammars or more changes to curriculum and testing.”

Labour will be represented by experienced journalist and party secretary for the Cotswolds Mark Huband, who was the Cotswold Labour lead for ‘Remain’ last year.

Father-of-two Mark lives in Brimscombe but spent much of his life abroad and in London as the parliamentary and foreign correspondents for The Guardian and The Financial Times.

He said: “Education is a subject which I feel strongly about, there is a huge danger in this country and the Cotswolds from underfunding – through from primary schools and up to secondaries.

“It is one which will understandably become very severe.”

“This comes on the back of a strong ideology from the central government on free schools.

“We have a situation in which money is being spent to create further free schools but schools in the Cotswolds are having to ask parents to chip in to help out.

“I myself went to a comprehensive and it set me up for life, when they work they really work well and are the best system.

“The departure from the EU affects all of us, there is a real need for a forensic assessment of every aspect of the negotiations. For the younger generation of people it would be great for them to have the opportunity to be educated in the EU.

“In the Cotswolds there is a need to improve infrastructure, it shouldn’t be that to get from Cirencester to Stroud you have to wait three hours for a bus.

“People need to get to work and to school and there must be a cast-iron agreement that people who need to use public transport feel they can rely on it.”

Mr Huband will also be looking to resolve the reliance on foodbanks, he said: “If our neighbours are in a position where they haven’t got enough food we do not live in a civilised society – it’s deeply shocking.”

The Green Party will be represented by Cirencester-based 26-year-old Sabrina Poole, the local coordinator of the ‘Make Votes Matter’ national campaign for proportional representation.

She said: “The Cotswolds is crying out for an alternative to the ping-pong between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats.

“I aim to stand up for the most vulnerable in our society, particularly in rural areas, from cuts to our schools to cuts to our NHS.

“It’s also time for our country to adopt a more progressive voting system that holds 'safe seat' career MPs to account.”

Her candidacy will hinge on rent control, plugging the deficit in the NHS, holding a further referendum on the EU, lowering the voting age to 16, scrapping university fees and protecting public funding in schools.

UKIP are fielding their candidate in the 2015 election Chris Harlow, who has lived in the constituency for 12 years, has business background and is a politics graduate.

He said: “I feel the Cotswolds needs to be represented by someone with a fresh view of politics, who is committed to the area, and who will challenge the old parties who have held power for too long.”

This year’s General Election will be held on Thursday, June 8, the deadline to register for your vote is Monday, May 22.