IF Nigel Farage’s party has any hope of returning an MP anywhere in the Bradford district, it is in Bradford South.

The constituency is considered one of the safest Labour seats around, but Ukip may well be the party’s closest competition.

Bradford South has been in Labour hands since the 1945 elections, held less than two months after VE day.

Its most recent MP, Gerry Sutcliffe, had become part of the furniture, having held the seat for more than 20 years.

The former Sports Minister in Gordon Brown’s Labour Government, leader of Bradford Council and print union negotiator has been a fixture in local and national politics since 1982.

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And his popularity had showed little sign of waning. In the most recent election, in 2010, Mr Sutcliffe defeated his nearest rival, Matthew Palmer of the Conservatives, with a healthy 4,622 majority.

But the 61-year-old has decided to step down from Parliament, and on May 7 the people of Bradford South will decide his successor.

Labour, which wants more of its MPs to be women, ran an all-female selection process. This culminated in Leeds councillor Judith Cummins being chosen as the Labour parliamentary candidate.

But Jason Smith, Ukip’s Bradford district chairman, is also running, and may well beat the Conservatives, Lib Dems and Greens to second place.

If it does so, this would be a huge improvement in its performance compared to 2010, when Ukip came fifth with less than four per cent of the vote in Bradford South.

Bookmaker William Hill has Labour as the 1/66 favourite to take the seat next month. It is offering odds of 20/1 for Ukip, 33/1 for the Conservatives and 150/1 for the Liberal Democrats.

But a love-them-or-hate-them party like Ukip also attracts its critics. The anti-extremism group Hope Not Hate is waging a campaign against Ukip and has named Bradford South as one of the areas of Yorkshire where it aims to persuade the electorate not to cast votes for Farage’s party.

Also standing in Bradford South are Tanya Graham for the Conservatives, Andrew Tear for the Liberal Democrats and Andy Robinson for the Green party.

One of the issues all parties may have to tackle is voter apathy - less than three-fifths of eligible voters took part in the 2010 general election in Bradford South, with turnout significantly lower than the national average of 65 per cent.

And it remains to be seen whether this general election, which many claim has failed to ignite the public interest in the way previous polls have done, will convince people to turn out and make their voices heard.

Immigration is likely to be a hot topic among voters - more than 2,600 people in Bradford South voted for the far-right British National Party in 2010, although the party has now all but disappeared from British politics and is not fielding any candidates in the district this year.

Other local issues that will be high on the agenda are jobs and employment, with Bradford South being home to many of the district’s biggest business parks and industrial estates, and transport links.