Seamus McCauley will be fighting the Sevenoaks seat for Labour. The 43-year-old lives at the old station master's house at Knockholt Station, which featured in The Railway Children, written just up the road at Halstead Hall.

He said: "The border of Sevenoaks takes a small detour to avoid my house and Knockholt Station - barring that bit of errant cartography, I’d live within the constituency, but in the event my house is two metres outside it. "

Mr McCauley works on the south coast near Folkestone as the editor of travel websites, having previously been a travel writer, at one time based at a house in the Malaysian rainforest outside Kuala Lumpur. He is also the publisher of various UK local news websites.

He said: "Back in 2009 I was part of the team at Northcliffe Newspapers that set up news websites including Sevenoakspeople.co.uk, Tonbridgepeople and Tunbridgewellspeople, where we employed local journalists from all over Kent."

He is a history graduate of Brasenose College, Oxford.

He said: "I’ve lived here for six years since moving down from London looking for somewhere to send my children to school and to be nearer to my work. I’m the proud father of wonderful twin boys, Adam and Russell.

"Sevenoaks’ local issues are my local issues. I can see the proposed development site at Broke Hill from my front door and - like most of the local people I talk to - I oppose the Tory council’s plans to build on the greenbelt here. I run in the woods above Shoreham, visit my beloved parents in Edenbridge, write a regular article for a Sevenoaks newspaper, shop in Swanley and take the train from Knockholt Station. This constituency is my home.

"I’ve been the chairman of Sevenoaks Labour Party for a couple of years, and before that branch secretary.

"I’m standing for Labour in Sevenoaks to stop the disastrous Brexit plans of the newly allied Tory and Brexit parties, to save the NHS from yet more privatisation, to end homelessness and to stop climate change while there’s still time."

The other candidates standing in Sevenoaks are Sean Finch (Libertarian Party), Paulette Furse (Ind), Laura Trott (Con), Paul Wharton (Green) and Gareth Willis (Lib Dem).

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