DAVID Drew has said he is "not that keen" on being the Labour candidate in the June general election, but has not ruled it out.

The former MP told the SNJ: "I can't see why we are having a general election at this time with the world on the brink of so many crises - North Korea, Turkey and Russia and internal tensions in Scotland and Ireland let alone Brexit.

"However the first question we will want Neil Carmichael to answer is how can Stroud's Conservative MP be a candidate when he is currently under police investigation for election fraud?"

Speaking to BBC News today, Mr Drew said: "I'm not that keen to do it, but we'll see.

"It's like anything, I would rather not commit myself having said that I've retired, you know I have retired.

"I mean the difficulty is that lots of people, party members and just members of the general public, are ringing up and sending me emails and tweets and so on, and that's very nice and it's very gratifying, but again the main thing is that we put in a proper challenge in Stroud because otherwise our democracy is fallible."

Mr Drew was the Member of Parliament for Stroud from 1997 to 2010 before he lost his seat to Neil Carmichael.

He ran in 2015 to no avail, only making small gains with the Conservatives winning with 45.7 percent of the vote.