The Green Party has chosen singer/songwriter Denise Morgan as its General Election candidate in Blackburn.

The Darwen mother of one, who stood unsuccessfully for Darwen South ward in last month's local elections, was selected at a party meeting on Sunday.

Her nomination papers for the July 4 national poll were accepted on Wednesday at Blackburn Town Hall.

Ms Morgan appeared on both the UK and Irish versions of The Voice in 2012 and 2015.

Her agent Robin Field said the party was 'very encouraged' by this month's YouGov poll which had the Green Party tied with the Conservatives on 10.9 per cent, behind defending Labour MP Kate Hollern on 60.5 per cent of the vote.

He said: "The campaign will be challenging because so many independents and outsiders want to stand on basically the same pro-Palestine platform, hence undermining the opposition to both Sunak and Starmer.

"This also happened in 2005 when Craig Murray intervened in Blackburn, splitting the anti-Iraq war vote with our own genuinely local candidate Graham Carter, himself the then secretary of Stop The War campaign in this area."

The full list of candidates expected to stand in Blackburn is: Kate Hollern, Labour; Jamie McGowan, Conservatives; Adam Waller-Slack, Liberal Democrats; Craig Murray, Workers Party; Adnan Hussain, Independent; Altaf 'Tiger' Patel, Independent; Natasha Shah, Independent; Denise Morgan, Green Party; Tommy Temperley, Reform UK.