What next for the Wirral Waterfront?

Jon Egan

As a child I found Wirral, and Birkenhead in particular, to be a deeply mystifying place. I knew that Ireland, where we went on holiday, was across the water, but where exactly was this other place? It wasn’t Liverpool, but was it even England or maybe Wales, or some strange liminal place existing outside my primitive geographical understanding?

My earliest journeys across the Mersey did little to dispel Wirral's sense of disquieting otherness. The deep, dark descent into the underworld of the Mersey Tunnel only reinforced its obvious detachment from humdrum reality. This must be the other side of the looking  glass.

Years later during my counter-cultural phase, and in the spirit of Parisian Surrealist explorations, we’d take “the metro” to Birkenhead in search of the merveilleux. Birkenhead’s numinous aura was only magnified by the eerie absence of people, the monumental grandeur of Hamilton Square echoing the ominous emptiness and abandonment of Giorgio de Chirico’s metaphysical city scapes.

In later years my associations with Birkenhead became more prosaic and practical through involvement in a succession of aborted regeneration initiatives and "visionary" but unrealised masterplans. Spending days talking to frustrated residents and world-weary stakeholders I was struck by their sad fatalism, as if the town had been subject to some strange and enervating enchantment. As Liverpool’s cityscape was magically transformed before their very eyes, Birkenhead seemed frozen in a state of suspended animation akin to Narnia trapped in its perpetual winter. 

But of course there was nothing supernatural about the decline of Birkenhead. Once styled the City of The Future, Birkenhead has a proud and pioneering history. In addition to its global shipbuilding prowess, it’s the town that built the UK’s first public park, its first Municipal College of Art as well as Europe’s first tramway. Birkenhead’s curse is a toxic blend of economic decline and disastrous urban planning, making  Birkenhead a place that’s easier to pass through than get to. Whilst cars, people and investment pass Birkenhead by, it’s tempting (and partially true) to point the finger at poor leadership and botched planning. But is there another more fundamental reason for the town’s baleful situation? Is it rooted in Birkenhead and Wirral’s deeper crisis of identity? 

Regeneration has to be informed and framed by a sense of place - a clarity of purpose and identity. Without an existential paradigm regeneration is likely to be a series of disconnected and arbitrary interventions, very often aiming to undo the unforeseen consequences of a previously failed intervention. Birkenhead shopping centre is a palimpsest of flawed visions and ham-fisted initiatives. It is still just about possible to discern the archaeological remnants of what was, once upon a time, a high street (Grange Road), dissected, butchered and disfigured by ugly and already half-redundant modernist protuberances . This is town planning re-imagined as self-mutilation. 

In 2001 Wirral Council attempted to resolve the peninsula's ambiguous identity with a bold, but alas unsuccessful bid for City Status. This was always a difficult proposition to sell given the uneasy relationship between the borough's urban Mersey edge and its bucolic hinterland. If Wirral isn't a city, then what is it? A municipal construct? A geographical descriptor? A lifestyle aspiration? Is it one place or an amalgam of places with quite different characteristics, histories and identities? It is difficult to suppress the suspicion that the failure to arrest the decline of its distinct urban centres has something to do with their slow immersion and disappearance into an amorphous and confused abstraction. It's little wonder that a Council without a settled sense of identity (its fractious communities historically divided about whether they should have an L or a CH postcode), should struggle to formulate or deliver a coherent regeneration vision. To borrow a Marxist analogy, Wirral's debilitating dialectic needed a resolving synthesis - and happily they found one.

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‘Downtown Birkenhead needs to re-orientate itself and define its future in relation to an already burgeoning Liverpool City Centre…’

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The Wirral Local Plan (currently awaiting Government approval) ingeniously united the borough's disparate communities and political factions with a strategy to vigorously defend its greenbelt and direct all new housing development onto urban and brownfield sites. Implicit in the plan are two revelatory and foundational propositions.

1) Wirral is not a homogenous place - its Mersey edge is a connected urban strip that is qualitatively different from the pastoral commuter settlements west of the M53. (Income disparity between the borough's most deprived and affluent areas is greater than in any other UK local authority area.

2) The history, identity and future of the urban edge is umbilically connected to the place it stirs out at across the Mersey (but sometimes thinks exists in a different hemisphere) - it’s Liverpool’s Left Bank.

Wirral's Left Bank vision was a new regeneration narrative to reposition and re-imagine the Mersey shore, but is also the core strategy against predatory housebuilders’ determination to challenge the no passaran defence of the greenbelt. However, this defence would only be sustainable if Wirral could make the Left Bank a sufficiently attractive and commercially rewarding location for the scale of building necessary to meet the borough's new homes requirement. 

And herein lies the challenge. From New Ferry to New Brighton, the Left Bank littoral has, in recent decades - with one gloriously idiosyncratic exception (more later) - been a virtual regeneration exclusion zone. Turning what is often perceived as Liverpool's down at heel urban annexe into a thriving regeneration powerhouse is a challenge requiring exceptional presentational and practical capabilities.

The presentational brief has been curated by an impressive creative team, combining the branding and visualising expertise of designer, Miles Falkingham with the editorial acumen and eloquence of Birkenhead writer, David Lloyd,  The Left Bank mood board, flawlessly realised in the eponymous digital and print magazine, presents a richly fertile incipient oasis, pregnant with possibilities and welcoming to innovators, prospectors and the independently inclined.

Birkenhead Dock Branch Park, conceptual visualisation.

The Left Bank

As a destination for the discerning, Left Bank is a counterpoint to a Right Bank (Liverpool) whose identity and character is being lost under the stultifying uniformity of the standard regeneration model. 

But the Left Bank idea is more than a cleverly crafted re-branding exercise. It is also a set of values and sign posts to inform the delivery of what is potentially Wirral's most transformational regeneration windfall. Birkenhead 2040 outlines a radical vision for a re-imagined Birkenhead town centre underpinned by a series of successful Levelling Up and Town Deal funding awards totalling £80 million. 

In 2016, following on from my involvement in a consultation on yet another undelivered regeneration project, I was one of a small group who produced an unsolicited document sent to Wirral's then Regeneration Director, entitled Manifesto for Downtown Birkenhead. A call to arms, it's opening paragraph set out the key challenge and imperative:

"Downtown Birkenhead needs to re-orientate itself and define its future in relation to an already burgeoning Liverpool City Centre. Reaching out and strengthening its sense of proximity and connectedness will be vital in attracting the energy, activity and people that are currently absent from a once vibrant centre." 

The content was a series of ideas offered or identified during our conversations with stakeholders, or arising from immersive wanderings around a town rich with unique and under-utilised assets. The ideas included creating the region's best urban market, transforming the abandoned Dock Branch railway into Birkenhead's "low-line" and creating a venue for the town's burgeoning new music scene. In 2019 a Festival of Ideas, held as part of Wirral's Borough of Culture programme rehearsed these and other possibilities that would become the anchor ideas for the successful funding bids. 

But with both the ideas and funding to deliver transformational change, doubts are emerging as to whether Birkenhead may once again squander a golden opportunity. Following a flurry of key officer departures, including Alan Evans, the Regeneration Chief widely credited with delivering the successful funding bids, concerns are growing that the Council lacks the organisational capacity and technical skills to translate tantalising visions into tangible realities. 

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‘…it’s something that people would be willing to get off a train for.’

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More worrying still, it is now highly probable that pragmatic imperatives will lead to the abandonment of one of 2040's flagship projects. When visionary Dutch architect Jan Knikker was engaged in 2015 by Liverpool developers, ION, to feed into their Move Ahead, Birkenhead masterplan, the possibility of an urban market as unflinchingly radical as his Rotterdam masterpiece became a beguiling statement of ambition. After all, Birkenhead had been a market town, and a re-imagined, relocated modern urban market was the one thing Liverpool didn't have to offer. In the words of Birkenhead Councillor and Wirral Green Party Co-Leader, Pat Cleary, "it’s something that people would be willing to get off a train for."

Citing spiralling costs, the proposal for a new market on the site of the former House of Fraser store at the interface between the St Werburgh's Quarter and the proposed Hind Street residential quarter, would now appear to be dead in the water. A proposal to move the existing market traders into the former Argos store in the Grange Precinct, which is owned by the Council, is being presented as a smart value for money solution that turns a vacant liability into a source of much-needed revenue.

For Cleary, this would be more that the death knell of one of 2040's most transformational projects, it would signify, in his words the replacement of a genuine "regeneration perspective by an asset management mentality." For Cleary, the future of the market is emblematic. If one piece of a coherent jigsaw can be removed, where does that leave projects like Dock Branch Park that could just as easily begin to look expensive and expendable. His is not a lone voice, Birkenhead MP, Mick Whitley, called on the Council to reaffirm its commitment to the new market, warning that the revised option "would mean years of work up in smoke." Following a fraught Council meeting on December 6th, it appears these concerns are unlikely to be heeded.  Although officers were instructed to investigate two other options  including refurbishing the existing market hall, the House of Fraser site looks likely to remain a boarded up monument to failed ambition.

Others intimately involved in the evolution of the 2040 vision are also worried that the integrity and spirit of the 2040 vision could be lost in delivery.  Liam Kelly, whose Make CIC organisation is a key partner in the delivery of the proposed creative hub in Argyle Street, is willing to accept the need for pragmatism, but favoured a less costly iteration of the existing plan on the proposed site, explaining, "it doesn't have to be expensive to look great." For Kelly, the litmus test for 2040 overall will be the Council's willingness to sustain the coalition of stakeholders and co-creators who have worked with the Council in shaping the vision. As the various funding strands are blended and the overall delivery architecture is refined, Kelly believes, it's about "having the doers around the table and how difficult decisions are made" that will safeguard the integrity and deliverability of the 2040 blueprint.

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‘Seeing the tragic and seemingly inevitable decline of the once vibrant Victoria Street, local entrepreneur, Dan Davies, embarked on a uniquely eccentric and joyous regeneration adventure.’

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With a final decision on the market project now scheduled for February, the omens point increasingly in the direction of Argos. Both Cleary and Kelly stress the much bigger picture perspective that is somehow absent from the beancounting calculations underpinning the Argos proposition. Without a radically different and vibrant Birkenhead town centre, the viability and credibility of plans to build thousands of new homes on brownfield land at Hind Street and Wirral Waters becomes highly questionable.  With Leverhulme Estates already launching a legal challenge in support of their plans for 800 greenbelt homes, the pressure on the Local Plan, and the fragile political consensus underpinning the Left  Bank idea, may begin to exhibit destabilising cracks and fissures.     

Away from Birkenhead there is another equally worrying indicator that when push comes to shove, pragmatism and asset management logic may be taking precedence over a commitment to the Left Bank aesthetic. There is no known precedent or template for the extraordinary regeneration story of Rockpoint and New Brighton. Seeing the tragic and seemingly inevitable decline of the once vibrant Victoria Street, local entrepreneur, Dan Davies, embarked on a uniquely eccentric and joyous regeneration adventure. Buying up empty and semi-derelict shops, he commissioned internationally renowned street artists to execute a series of spectacular murals celebrating the history, culture and identity of the town memorably dubbed, The Last Resort, by photographer Martin Parr. 

This was not just about a lick of paint or a superficial facelift to cheer the spirits.  Davies's restless energy and obsessive Canute-style audacity has reversed the tide of decline by bringing new businesses, cafes, venues,  an art gallery, pub, recording studio and performance space to make Victoria Street possibly one of the most visually and creatively eclectic high streets in this part of England.

With an offer that caters for every demographic - from disadvantaged young people to socially isolated older residents - the breadth of Rockpoint's improvised and quirky inclusivity was perhaps most perfectly expressed in Hope - The Anti-Supermarket. Occupying the thrice-failed food store, Rockpoint transformed the unit into a multi-use space for artisan and independent retailers, social events, comedy, music and local am-dram performances. At a time when communities everywhere are witnessing a diminution of social capital and public space, Davies was delivering, under one roof, the kind of outcomes that 2040's proposed "creative" and "wellbeing hubs" can only promise.  In a baffling decision, Wirral Council chose not to extend Rockpoint's tenure of the building, opting instead for the revenue rewards of a hardware store. Hadn't they read the magazine?

The Left Bank idea is an astute piece of positioning, and with an intelligently targeted and resourced campaign, it’s a necessary component in differentiating Wirral's offer, and guiding its regeneration direction. But the Market and Anti-Supermarket case studies also highlight the fragility of mood board-based regeneration, especially when those ineffable and immeasurable subtleties don't convert easily into the hard currency of public sector fiduciary imperatives.

But perhaps there is another flaw in a strategy that fails to distinguish between necessary and sufficient causation. Paris's Left Bank is not simply the bohemian haunts of the Latin Quarter and St Germain-des-Pres and nor is London's South Bank just Borough Market and its trendier residential enclaves. To return to Pat Cleary's challenge, what will make enough people get off the train, or even decide to put down roots in the new urban neighbourhoods envisaged in Birkenhead and the Left Bank? To be more than the One-Eyed town, doesn't Birkenhead need (and deserve) its equivalent of The Musee D'Orsay or Tate Modern? At the conclusion of the Manifesto for Downtown Birkenhead, we posed a question - shouldn't the town that invented public parks and pioneered mass transit reclaim its capacity for innovation and ambition?     

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“Important places are home to important institutions.... Far from being frightened of big ambitious ideas, we need to encourage them, test them and ultimately deliver them.”

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Does 2040 lack the scale of ambition and impact necessary to deliver the catalytic stimulus that Birkenhead requires? Conceiving and delivering projects of that magnitude (including the discreetly mooted V&A of The North) and integrating and re-balancing the two banks of what a casual visitor might mistakenly believe to be one city, is a task that probably necessitated the invention of a City Region and a Metro Mayor. 

In fairness to Wirral, the authority has been especially ravaged by the impact of austerity, hollowing out its core capacities and stretching  services to breaking point. This is a difficult time to navigate the uncharted terrain of delivery, and the pressure and temptation to find pragmatic compromises may be difficult to resist. 

In difficult and demanding circumstances, Wirral has formulated a complex and highly integrated planning and regeneration prospectus, an edifice where big picture objectives are founded on detailed and precisely crafted plans and projects. When Councillors meet to make a final decision on the future of Birkenhead Market in February, they may need to consider whether this is the moment to play a particularly precarious game of jenga?

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Jon Egan is a former electoral strategist for the Labour Party and has worked as a public affairs and policy consultant in Liverpool for over 30 years. He helped design the communication strategy for Liverpool’s Capital of Culture bid and advised the city on its post-2008 marketing strategy. He is an associate researcher with think tank, ResPublica.

*Main image: Eszter Imrene Virt, Alamy

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Israel-Hamas: Britain looks for fascists in the wrong place

Paul Bryan

It was like all their Christmases had come at once. This was the evidence they needed to quash their opponents and get rid of that evil witch, Suella Braverman, the now ex-Home Secretary.

Famed Far-Right pantomime villain, Tommy Robinson had put in a brief London appearance on Armistice Day as part of the counter protest against the Pro-Palestine march, though he quickly fled the scene in a taxi once the police closed in. There was some pushing and shoving and objects thrown as a crowd of white men headed to ‘protect’ the Cenotaph. “Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Was. Looking. For. Blood. Every one,” intoned professional scouser, sports reporter and mind reader Tony Evans, formerly of the Times. After all, he should know. “I live in Pimlico,” he tweeted. Enough said.

The media went to town of course, with Channel 4 News embarrassing themselves with the claim that ‘the only scuffles on the day involved far-right protesters who clashed with police.’ This spurious claim was later deleted.

Meanwhile, that bellwether of over-the-top reaction, polemicist Owen Jones, did his level best to impose a simplistic division of oppressed and oppressor on the marches. “There were two protests,” he tweeted. “One were a bunch of far right thugs intent on violence. The other was a massive Palestinian protest with “no issues”. One was whipped up by politicians and media outlets. The other was demonised by them.” At least Owen, waited for events to unfold (somewhat). The Liverpool Echo’s political editor and sometime Newsnight guest, Liam Thorp, couldn’t wait to get stuck in, tweeting at 11am that “The responsibility for any violence today lies solely with the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister who is too weak to deal with her dangerous chaos.” Why does he always sound like a pound-shop Churchill?

The feeling that the script was already written before the birds had tweeted was overwhelming. So let’s get somethings straight. Members of the Far Right were present in London though their numbers are hard to pin down – I’ve seen everything from 200 to 2000 quoted in the media – a x10 level of confusion that points to the subjective nature of the assessment. Quite what qualifies which members of the crowd were Far Right and which weren’t was not always obvious – though white skin, opposition to the Pro-Palestinian marches and shouting obscenities seemed qualification enough for many pundits. I suspect membership cards of the English Defence League and their like were largely absent but who knows? After all, the Far-Right label is used so promiscuously these days, it’s becoming hard to distinguish between your Mosely’s and your Monetarists. Alan Gibbons, leader of the Liverpool Community Independents seemed to sum up the mood of presumption - “Look, if it quacks like a fascist, chants like a fascist and attacks police like a fascist it's a fascist.” Obviously not spent much time around Red Action then. Anyway, Alan thought he’d found the smoking gun – a picture of a thug with a swastika tattooed on his torso. Labour MP Dianne Abbot was chuffed about it too. Sadly, a quick reverse image search revealed the picture was from 2016 and not in fact from this year’s Armistice Day marches, but let’s not allow facts to get in the way of good story.

If our understanding of fascism becomes reduced to hunting for swastikas, we may miss the bigger picture. Image: Twitter

Talking of facts, here’s a few – 126 people have so far been arrested in a demonstration involving over 300,000 people. More will most probably follow but the number is thankfully relatively small. Many of those arrests, as one officer explained on the radio, were pre-emptive of serious trouble, the police choosing to use arrests as a method of keeping opposing camps apart. A knife, a knuckleduster and a baton were found as well as some class-A drugs. Nine police officers were injured amidst chants of “You’re not English anymore.”

We’re told the majority of arrests were from the right-wing and according to the Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner, Matt Twist this group was largely made up of “football hooligans from across the UK.” The police are now trying to hunt down protesters from the pro-Palestinian side who are accused of that most amorphous of crime/non-crime categories - hate crime, as well as possible support for proscribed organisations like Hamas. Officers intercepted a group of 150 who were wearing face coverings and firing fireworks. Arrests were made after some of the fireworks struck officers in the face.

So there you have it. It got ugly in places, and where it did the police successfully kept a lid on things. But and here’s the rub, I’m struggling to reconcile the relatively small scale of the trouble with the histrionic shout-outs for a disaster averted. The question we should ask ourselves is why were the ‘Ceasefire Now’ crew so excited about the appearance of a scintilla of right-wingers?

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“The idea that white, Far-Right nationalists were just waiting for their Asian Home Secretary to let them off the leash is of course absurd.”

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I think there are two answers to this question. One is about Suella Braverman and the other is about diverting the public gaze from the horrors of Palestinian violence.

On the first point, LBC presenter James O’Brien, who likes a good quote, couldn’t help giving the game away. “The Home secretary wanted a riot,” he thundered. Does he do anything but thunder? He continued… “Editors of national newspapers, columnists and commentators… ‘pray that there is not a riot at the Cenataph’ they wrote, while licking their lips at the prospect.” Oh, the hypocrisy! It should be clear to everyone that Suella Braverman is everything progressives hate. They were determined to pin this one on her because they wanted her head and they weren’t going to be satisfied until they got it. Right wing violence on Armistice Day was the metaphorical bullet and they were determined to pull the trigger.

I just wish the James O’Brien’s and the Liam Thorp’s of this world would be honest about that – they were licking their lips too. The absurdity of the proposition that it was all Suella’s fault was for me, best summarised by this tweet…

Adult literacy amongst the Far-Right has clearly improved in recent years. Image: Twitter

‘Seen the latest from Suella lads? Worth the subscription to get over the Times paywall. Also excellent pieces from Caitlin Moran and Giles Coren, and Eleanor Hayward is simply the best health correspondent in Fleet Street,’ wrote Gareth Roberts.

The idea that white, Far-Right nationalists were just waiting for their Asian Home Secretary to let them off the leash is of course absurd. But it reveals how the public is increasingly viewed by the political class as mindless puppets who will do whatever they’re told. If it wasn’t for Suella, the logic goes, the yobs would have stayed at home, ironing their flags of St George. They were ‘inflamed’ by her words, unleashing the beast within. As if.

The other reason for the lip-licking is all too transparent. It’s the finger pointing of the anti-racist. ‘Look’, they say, ‘only racists and white supremacists would not want to join our side in our quest for a Free Palestine. Israel is an apartheid state. Join us, as we march from the river to the sea.’

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“For all the focus on the threat of Britain’s rump of a right-wing and their historic focus on immigration and racial purity, do you not see a far more extreme mirror of that vile ideology in the rantings of Hamas and Hezbollah?”

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These tactics are destined to fail because there are many who can see through them and don’t want to become apologists for a form of Islamofascism. Yasser Arafat, the one-time Chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) and leader of the supposedly more tolerant Fatah Party, once said, “We will not bend or fail until the blood of every last Jew from the youngest child to the oldest elder is spilt to redeem our land.” What do you think he meant exactly? For all the focus on the threat of Britain’s rump of a right-wing and their historic focus on immigration and racial purity, do you not see a far more extreme mirror of that vile ideology in the rantings of Hamas and Hezbollah? Except, unlike the EDL, these ‘liberators’ have the weapons and the resources to kidnap, maim and kill, as well as making victims of their own people.

Calling for a Ceasefire Now means leaving Hamas intact, free to pursue future campaigns of horrific barbarism. More October 7ths. No thank you. Not for me.

Israel-Hamas: Collective insanity threatens to overwhelm us

In the aftermath of the Pro-Palestine marches in London and the much smaller counter-protest, a game of political ping-pong has ensued. Videos clips are being swapped online from all sides as a new digital currency in moral certainty. Have you seen the one of fascists surging past the police? Yobs! Right-wing scum. Yes, but have YOU seen the one with the Palestine supporter saying, “Hitler knew how to deal with these people.” Islamic fascism right there. Yes, but what about those WHITE supremacists causing mayhem at the train station? What, you mean the one where a protester shouts “death to all Jews.” And so it goes on…

There’s a danger that we’re all about to lose our heads and if we let it, it could get ugly.  

Now, I don’t want to give the impression that this is about to be some country vicar, Thought For The Day style piece, urging a gentle middle road, while papering over the cracks in our civilisation with kind words and a cup of tea. There is clearly a huge amount at stake. But I would at least ask everyone to take a deep breath and not assume the very worst motivations from those who find themselves on the opposite side of the fence. There lies the path to de-humanisation and all that goes with it. Rather than summoning partial evidence to prove a point that we know deep down does not represent the full picture, maybe we should look for the courage to acknowledge the flaws in both camps.

Is this image dehumanising? Owen Jones thought so but others disagreed. If we are forever re-defining words to mean whatever we want them to mean, we will lose our ability to think straight. Perhaps that’s the point. Image: Twitter; cartoon originally from Ramirez, Las Vegas Review Journal for the Washington Post.

I for one am critical of the Pro-Palestinian ‘peace’ marches. I just don’t think they represent what their supporters claim, hopelessly entwinned as they are with Islamicist influences favouring a free Palestine ‘from the river to the sea’. A recent article in the Telegraph showed six of the organisations behind Saturday’s London march had connections to Hamas including Muhammad Kathem Sawalha, a former Hamas chief who co-founded the Muslim Association of Britain. This is not a good look. To me, too many people are diving naively in with their eyes closed to the movement’s nasty antisemitic underbelly and risk turning themselves into willing tools of groups who do not share their values and who use apologists consciously and calculatingly as cover. But even I have to admit that many of the protesters clearly mean well – responding to the horrific pictures coming out of Gaza with a natural, empathic desire to put a stop to the suffering. Clearly, they hope that silencing the guns can be a first step in finding a new and lasting peace process in which all can reconcile and heal deep wounds. This is an admirable instinct and should be recognised (when it’s not premised on virtue signalling), but I’d put it in the category of viewing the world through the lens of how we want it to be, rather than how it is really is.

Palestinian leadership have rejected every peace offer that’s ever been put on the table – in 1947, in 2000, and 2008. Negotiations have swiftly been followed by rockets and bombs. Meanwhile, the Jewish settler movement, aided with a nod and a wink by the administrations of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, appears to believe it is their God-given right to continue encroaching on the West Bank. As one settler infamously explained a few years back, while attempting to take possession of a property that wasn’t his, “If I don’t steal it, someone else is gonna steal it.”  This is religiously inspired entitlement as cover for our basest instincts.

A prized peace cannot hold in the iron grip of absolutism. For all the blood and rubble, you cannot negotiate with someone whose only vision of the future is wanting you dead and gone. Especially ones with a scripture-endorsed death wish where, as author and podcaster, Sam Harris puts it, sadism is “celebrated as a religious sacrament.” Those who have watched the raw footage of the October 7th massacre have described how the killers were elated at their deeds. Douglas Murray for the Jewish Chronicle recounts chillingly, how one Hamas terrorist called his parents back in Gaza to boast that he had killed ten Jews “with my own hands.” Ecstatic with joy he received the praise he desired - “Their boy had turned out good.”

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“A prized peace cannot hold in the iron grip of absolutism. For all the blood and rubble, you cannot negotiate with someone whose only vision of the future is wanting you dead and gone.”

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There is a secularist presumption at play that all people basically want the same thing – peace, security, a roof over their head, good schools, full bellies and a decent job. But what if it’s not true? Here in the West, this ‘humanistic’ presumption is mapped onto the Israel-Hamas conflict even if it doesn’t apply to all the protagonists. People calling for a ceasefire now, such as the RMT union leader, Mick Lynch end up thinking with a bit of good grace and a fair wind the Israelis and Palestinians can be convinced to sit around a table and hammer it out. As if this was a negotiation over terms and conditions. From this perspective, when confronted with the reality of suicide bombers and hideous acts of barbarity, the question is asked - how could this be? What could turn people to such extreme behaviour? And the prescription as Sam Harris characterises it, is always the same – “they must have been pushed into it…their entire society oppressed and humiliated to the point of madness by some malign power. So many people, he says, “imagine that the ghoulish history of Palestinian terrorism simply indicates how profound the injustice has been on the Israeli side.” And some might argue that the extremities of the Jewish holocaust layered on century after century of cruel pogroms have had a similar effect on the Jewish psyche. But perhaps these explanations are all too neatly packaged for the contemporary western imagination. In an interview with Piers Morgan, psychologist and author, Jordan Peterson makes the point that the sins of the father are visited on their children. That we may not wish life was like this, but it is – generations of bloody violence echoing down in retribution. It’s hard to break the cycle, not impossible, but hard, especially when you add a strong dose of religious certainty that can make even good people do bad things.

Maybe, just maybe, the cries to martyrdom reveal a deeper, unsettling truth about the role belief plays in violence. Maybe the people of the region need to look deep within to question the core ideas that shape their coda.

Oops, we did it again …

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Paul Bryan is the Editor and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a freelance content writer, script editor and creative coach.

@thePabryan

*Main image: Mark Kerrison, Alamy

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Not So Red: Labour’s Slow Rise in the Scouse Republic

David Swift

You don’t often see Liverpool compared to Iran. And certainly a stroll through the city centre on a Friday or Saturday night brings sights you probably wouldn’t see in downtown Tehran.

In an essay comparing the politics of Iran and Egypt, the sociologist Asef Bayat pointed out that Egypt, despite having strong popular support for Islamist politics and a weak middle class, never established a religious theocracy along Iranian lines. The difference being that in Iran, the government of the Shah had successfully eliminated all secular opposition – liberals, socialists, trade unionists – so the Mullahs were the only people in a position to take over, despite a lack of broader support for their project. So Egypt had an Islamic movement but not an Islamic revolution,  and Iran had an Islamic revolution without much of an Islamist movement.

Over the past 100 years something similar has happened in the political transformation of Liverpool. From a bastion of working-class Toryism, Liverpool has become a city with the five safest Labour seats in the country. Other areas with similar demographics have seen Labour’s support slide in recent years, but in Liverpool the party’s dominance has continued to grow.

Yet curiously, beneath the surface, just like in Iran, the dominant political movement has been anything but strong. Liverpool has undergone this Labour revolution with a much weaker, organised Labour movement than other cities. Don’t believe me? Look at the history.

This year marks the centenary of the election of Jack Hayes, the first Labour MP to sit for a Liverpool constituency – who won the 1923 Edge Hill by-election. This breakthrough came roughly two decades after other ‘Labour heartlands’ such as Manchester, East London, Glasgow, Leeds and South Wales had elected their first Labour MPs.

Before and even after Jack Hayes’ triumph, Liverpool was solidly Tory. From 1885 to 1923, with just a few exceptions, the city’s nine constituencies were won by the Conservative candidate in every parliamentary election. Toxteth was represented by people with little claim to working class roots; people with grand-sounding names such as Henry de Worms and Augustus Frederick Warr. It is hard to imagine now but for 14 years the MP for rugged Kirkdale was a Baronet called Sir John de Fonblanque Pennefather.

The most notable exception to Tory dominance at that time was the Liverpool Scotland constituency, centred on Scotland Road, which was dominated by Irish immigrants. Held by the Irish Nationalist T.P. O’Connor from 1885 until his death in 1929, his victory remains the only time a British parliamentary seat has been won by an Irish nationalist party outside the island of Ireland.

Of course, the Liberals had the occasional reason to celebrate too, winning Liverpool Exchange in 1886, 1887, 1906 and 1910 as well as Liverpool Abercromby in their general election landslide of 1906. But even at that election – a wipeout for the Tories and their worst result until 1945 – the Liberal Party only managed to win two of Liverpool’s nine seats, with the Conservatives taking six out of the other seven.

An Irish Republican, Tory Baron and Liverpool’s first Labour MP walk into a bar. But who’s who?

Left to Right: Jack Hayes Labour MP for Edge Hill (1923-31); T.P. O’Connor the Irish Nationalist MP For Liverpool Scotland (1885-1929); and Baron Henry de Worms, Conservative MP for East Toxteth (1885-95). Image credits in respective order (left to right): Bassano Ltd, public domain via Wikimedia Commons; Bain - Library of Congress (1917); Alamy

Some commentators have claimed Liverpool politics are based on rebelliousness or innate defiance and a willingness to speak up and go against the crowd. Which makes what happened in the 1906 general election all the more fascinating. Dominated by the issue of free trade, the Conservatives lost badly at the national level because it was feared their plan to impose tariffs on imported goods would damage trade. And yet even in this election, in a town as totally dependent on trade as Liverpool, even in a port city, Liverpolitans put two fingers up to the national trend and voted for the Tories anyway. Was this an early example of that noted tendency to contrarian defiance or slavish support for the party of power?

Of course, at this time, the six-year-old Labour party was not a serious force around the banks of the Mersey and their leader Ramsay MacDonald – who later become the first Labour Prime Minister, knew it too. In 1910, after a visit to the city he seemed to accept they had no prospects of winning there any time soon, writing with a note of sour grapes that ‘Liverpool is rotten and we had better recognize it’.

Why was Liverpool so slow to support the party of the working class?

One explanation often put forward is the narrowness of the parliamentary franchise which dictated who got to vote. It’s claimed voting restrictions prevented many working people from making their voices heard and it’s certainly true that this affected politics at this time, though perhaps not always in the ways most commonly understood. From 1867, men in ‘borough’ constituencies (usually towns and cities like Liverpool) were able to vote in general elections but only if they were defined as a ‘householder’. This meant a man living independently by himself or with his wife and children who also paid a minimum of £10 a year in rent. In theory, most working-class men could now vote, but in reality it’s estimated 40% of men nationwide were disenfranchised until these rules were relaxed in 1918.

This was because the lack of affordable accommodation meant many men still lived at home with their parents or in houses with multiple families, and so fell foul of the rule. In a port city like Liverpool, where seafaring was the second largest source of employment, this would have been particularly significant because so many men worked away for long periods. The 1921 census found there were twelve times as many men without a fixed address or workplace in Bootle than in St Helens.

Nonetheless, some historians have challenged the idea the franchise disproportionately affected working-class voters, noting that, on average, men from working-class backgrounds found work, left home and started families earlier than their middle-class equivalents. As noted by Neal Blewett in an article for Past and Present, middle-class professionals were more likely to be lodgers, who very often couldn’t vote. It’s too easy to use the disenfranchisement of working-class voters to explain Tory dominance in the city - especially since women, who have tended to favour the Conservatives by wide margins, were unable to vote in general elections until 1918. Perhaps the limitations on the voting franchise hurt rather than helped the Tories. In her influential book, The Iron Ladies (1987), journalist Beatrix Campbell claimed Labour would have won every election between 1945 and 1979 but for women’s right to vote.

The influence of sectarianism overstated

It’s also too easy to blame ‘sectarianism’ for Tory rule in Liverpool. According to this analysis, conflict between Protestants and Catholics divided the working class vote, with Catholics favouring ‘home rule’ for Ireland supporting the Irish Nationalist party (the IPP), while Protestants opposing greater Irish autonomy voted for the Conservatives. The argument goes that the conditions for a Labour breakthrough in Liverpool only occurred after Irish independence in 1922, when the sting went out of the nationalist cause. Catholic votes transferred to Labour, whilst Protestants, with the nationalist issue seemingly resolved, felt less inclined to vote Tory.

But many historians, such as Sam Davies, have downplayed the importance of sectarianism, arguing instead that Tory dominance resulted from the weakness of the Labour party in local politics and splits in the anti-Tory vote.

Famously, Churchill sent gunboats on the Mersey in 1911 to quell a dockers strike, but despite this Liverpool was still voting Conservative. Meanwhile in Glasgow … Red Clydeside was already represented in parliament. Image: HMS Antrim, Ernest Hopkins, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s instructive to compare the political situation in Liverpool to that of Glasgow - another town with a violent sectarian divide. While Liverpool outside of Scotland Road was staunchly Tory, in Glasgow, sectarian sentiment saw a surge in support for the Liberal Party. As far back as 1886, with the Liberal Government led by William Gladstone (a Liverpolitan), proposing Home Rule for Ireland under a less centralised United Kingdom, Catholic voters jumped at the opportunity to get behind the Bill. Nationally, the 1886 general election saw the Liberals lose over 150 seats as the issue proved unpopular. Yet in Glasgow, the Liberals won four of the city’s nine seats – with another two going to the ‘Liberal Unionists’ who, opposing the move, were no doubt supported by the city’s Protestants. Liverpool never saw anything like this degree of sectarian influence.

Back to that 1906 election, which by the way was only the second to be contested by the newly-formed Labour party. While Liverpool was busy voting Tory, in Glasgow, former shipyard worker George Barnes was elected as a Labour MP for Glasgow Blackfriars and Hutchesontown, a seat he held until he was elected for the new Gorbals constituency in 1918, alongside Neil Maclean, who won in Govan. By 1922, Labour was winning ten of the city’s 15 seats. In contrast, no Liverpool constituency elected a Labour MP until after the party had taken most of the seats in Glasgow.

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“It is perhaps forgotten today, but back in the interwar years, the largest unions on Merseyside, the TGWU and the National Union of Seamen - representing dockers and sailors – had an inconsistent relationship with the Labour party.”

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The importance of skilled workers and Nonconformists

One reason for Labour’s earlier breakthrough in Glasgow was its stronger concentration of skilled trades. Although like Liverpool, a major port, Glasgow relied less on distribution and more on the dominant industry of shipbuilding. This provided a stronger industrial base with many skilled jobs defended by well-organised trade unions. Even if we include the Cammel Laird shipyards in nearby Birkenhead, Liverpool never had a similar level of manufacturing jobs. There was far too much reliance on low-skilled, casual labour which was a lower priority for the wider trade union movement.

At this time, areas that voted Labour had either strong trade unions, or high levels of Nonconformist Protestants such as Baptists, Methodists, Quakers – or both. You can see this trend in places like South Wales, West Yorkshire, East Lancashire, and the Durham coalfield. Nonconformity was linked with moral and political liberalism: Nonconformists such as William Wilberforce had been prominent anti-slavery advocates, and were over-represented among critics of British imperialism. They also challenged elements of the British establishment such as the Church of England and the House of Lords. In Liverpool, however, the trade unions were small or weak, whilst most people were Catholics or Anglicans, with few Protestant Nonconformists.

It is perhaps forgotten today, but back in the interwar years, the largest unions on Merseyside, the TGWU and the National Union of Seamen - representing dockers and sailors – had an inconsistent relationship with the Labour party. In 1927, the Executive Committee of the Liverpool Labour Party (then known as the Liverpool Trades Council and Labour Party) was formed from clerks, postal workers, electricians, engineers, railwaymen, painters and insurance workers. Dressmakers, shop assistants, clerical workers, tailors and garment workers were all well represented in the membership – but representatives from the two dominant occupations in the city were conspicuous by their absence.

Tories still strong after World War 2 and the politics of normal

Even after the 1945 Labour landslide, the Conservatives continued to win elections in Liverpool. Tory MPs were elected for Walton and West Derby until 1964, and for Wavertree and Garston until 1983. At the 1959 local elections, six of Liverpool’s nine council wards were controlled by the Conservatives, and three of those were solidly working-class areas, including Toxteth and Walton.

During the 1970s, control of the council swung between the Tories and Liberals. When the Trotskyist Militant Tendency took over in 1983, they succeeded a Conservative-Liberal coalition.

When Labour was successful on Merseyside in this period it was not because of a strong local labour movement, but because political sentiment was tracking with the ‘normal’, with the city tending to vote in line with national trends

Speaking to political scientist David Jeffery, who studies electoral politics in Liverpool, he told me that after the Second World War there was a general trend towards the ‘nationalisation of politics’. By this he means that national rather than local issues became key determinants in deciding how to vote. Local politics began to matter a lot less, so the Liverpool vote tracked the national vote share. As elsewhere in the country, the party in power nationally would usually suffer in local elections.

As Jeffery explained, the Tory successes in council elections during the late 1960s were not driven by a surge in support for the Tories, but rather a collapse in the Labour vote due to the growing unpopularity of Harold Wilson’s Labour government in Westminster.

Then in the early 1970s, when Ted Heath’s Conservative government was unpopular, Labour and the Liberals did better in local elections, and in 1998, a year after Tony Blair’s Labour landslide, the Liberal Democrats once again took power of Liverpool City Council.

Prone to takeover – the problem with Labour’s low local membership

Even though there was a real change of the political culture and identity of the city in the 1980s, there was still not much of a labour ‘movement’. One of the reasons Militant was able to take over Liverpool Labour was because the local Labour party branches had relatively few members. They’d become hollowed out and simply didn’t have enough people to buttress against a well-organised and well-motivated sect.

Historically, in areas without strong trade unions there would be relatively few people in the local Labour party – put simply if you were not a union member or close to a union member you were far less likely to get involved with Labour. So once the unions lost their strength and influence from the 1980s onwards, alongside a decline in local government, the traditional working class routes into local politics dried up. Membership of Labour constituency branches (CLPs) in traditional working class areas has been on the slide ever since. As an example, the biggest constituency Labour parties today such as Hornsey and Wood Green in London have over 3,000 members, but one of Liverpool’s largest, Liverpool Walton, claims to have just over one thousand, and that might have been at the height of the Jeremy Corbyn membership surge.

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One of the reasons Militant was able to take over Liverpool Labour was because the local Labour party branches had relatively few members. They’d become hollowed out and simply didn’t have enough people to buttress against a well-organised and well-motivated sect.

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Just as in the early twentieth century, Liverpool today has a large working-class population, but it doesn’t have much of a labour movement – despite Labour consistently winning elections.

There have been well-supported social justice movements: such as during the dock strike of 1995-1998, the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, and more recently grassroots initiatives such as Fans Supporting Foodbanks. But this hasn’t translated into high membership or engagement with the Labour party itself.

Middle-class activists and the politics of identity

Labour’s membership surged under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn from just 198,000 in 2015 to 564,000 by 2017. But how many of these new members were from traditionally working class communities? Creative Commons C.C.0 1.0 via Wikimedia.

As far back as Tony Blair, commentators have noted how the ‘Islington set’ have become increasingly influential in the politics of the Labour party. People whose personal circumstances had taken them a long way from the traditional Labour voter were now shaping the party’s direction. During Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in the 2010s, membership of the party grew, but often those new members were not from the traditional voter base. London, by comparison to Liverpool, has far higher levels of middle-class graduates and these are exactly the kind of people who have historically joined political parties. It’s not surprising that in places with more middle class voters, there’s been increased enthusiasm and engagement with Labour. But back in the Labour heartlands, not so much. This relative lack of enthusiasm and political engagement can be seen by comparing the turnouts of the last mayoral races in Liverpool and London: in both cases, everyone knew that the Labour candidate would win, yet in London the turnout was 40%, in Liverpool it barely reached 30%.

In recent years, the Liverpool Left has become more radical on cultural issues such as race and ethnicity - but it’s doubtful whether the city’s population is as liberal as their representatives on these issues.

The website, Electoral Calculus breaks down the demographics and political culture of each of the UK’s 650 constituencies, and ranks them according to their political opinion on economics (Left versus Right), internationalism (Global versus National) and culture (Liberal versus Conservative). It then uses cluster analysis to identify the influence of one of seven ‘Tribes’ in each constituency - including ‘Progressives’, ‘Traditionalists’, ‘Centrists’, ‘Kind Young Capitalists’, ‘Somewheres’, ‘Strong Left’ and ‘Strong Right’. It also estimates how each constituency seat voted in the Brexit referendum, a much finer grain of breakdown than exists in the official statistics.

Let’s take a look at how it assesses Liverpool’s five safest Labour seats:

Liverpool Walton - Traditionalist

27 degrees Left, 3 degrees Globalist and 1 degree Conservative; 52% voted Leave.

Knowsley - Traditionalist

26 degrees Left, 2 degrees Globalist, 2 degrees Conservative; 52% voted Leave.

Bootle - Traditionalist

25 degrees Left, 3 degrees Globalist, 0 degrees Social; 50% voted Leave.

West Derby - Traditionalist

26 degrees Left , 6 degrees Global, 1 degree Liberal; 48% voted Leave.

Liverpool Riverside – Strong Left

21 degrees Left, 29 degrees Globalist and 18 degrees Liberal; 27% voted Leave.

As you can see, the top four constituencies are classed as ‘Traditionalists’, according to the Electoral Calculus formula. The people in these seats have, on average, left-wing economic views but cultural and social views that are centrist or conservative.

Traditionalist Kirkby. Small ‘c’ conservatism may rule when it comes to social and cultural views in many of the region’s Labour constituencies. Image Kirkby High Street (2023) by Paul Bryan

In a recent study into how local identities impact on voting behaviour in the Liverpool City Region, David Jeffery also found that while Liverpool constituencies are in the bottom quarter nationally in terms of pro-monarchy sentiment, they are still more pro than anti-monarchy. He found that only 18% of Liverpudlians feel ‘only Scouse’, just 5 percentage points higher than the 13% who feel ‘only English’, with the rest feeling some mixture of Scouse and English.

What can we read into this?

It appears that despite the victories of the Labour party in parliamentary and local elections, there is a large amount of small ‘c’ socially conservative sentiment in the city. That is why up to three constituencies likely voted Leave, and why UKIP came third in the 2014 local elections – only 969 votes off the Greens in second place. They did especially well in working-class wards such as Club Moor, County, Fazakerley, and Norris Green.

This data suggests there’s a risk of Liverpool Labour overreaching on culture, as happened recently with the Scottish National Party (SNP). Despite Scotland’s population being slightly more sceptical on trans rights than the UK average, the SNP leadership assumed they could push forward with radical gender policies - an approach which led to Kate Forbes, who opposes same-sex marriage, coming within 3,000 votes of winning the party’s leadership election.

Within the past year, the SNP has gone from looking invulnerable to now polling only 1% ahead of Labour. Obviously this has not all been down to overplaying their hand on cultural issues, but  nonetheless it’s a salutary warning for Liverpool Labour about the dangers of hubris, and mistaking the transformation in the politics of the city for a transformation in its culture. 

In the hundred years since the election of the city’s first Labour MP, Liverpool’s support for Labour appears stronger than ever. But history suggests an unpopular Starmer government and continued chaos at the municipal level could well see the party lose power locally and for the majorities of the city’s MPs to be chipped away. The city’s current loyalty to Labour cannot be taken for granted, either by national politicians looking to Liverpool for lessons, or by local figures who might mistake voting patterns for political and cultural radicalism.

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David Swift is a historian and writer specialising in Left wing activism who has written for publications such as the New Statesman, The Times, Tribune and Unherd. He is the author of three books including A Left For Itself; and The Identity Myth.

His latest book, Scouse Republic? A Personal History of Liverpool, will be published in 2024 by the Little, Brown Book Group.

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*Main image created on Stable Diffusion.

Mancpool: One Mayor, One Authority, One Vision?

Jon Egan

Manchester Bees Meet Liverpool Super Lambananas by mmcd studio

Is it time the city of Liverpool threw its lot in with Manchester and accepted one combined North West Metro Mayor to rule us all? Jon Egan thinks so. As you can imagine, the suggestion has caused some debate in Liverpolitan Towers and we are not all in agreement. But what do you think? Here Jon makes his case and hints at future initiatives to come…

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So let me issue a warning now. This article contains material that many Liverpudlians will find deeply distressing and offensive. It’s an argument that I have tentatively proffered in the past, but after profound and serious reflection, have concluded, now needs to be set out in the most explicit and uncompromising of terms. You have been warned.

David Lloyd’s recent article for The Post lamenting the exodus of Liverpool’s “best and brightest” was as ever an enlightening and enjoyable read, notwithstanding its downbeat and dispiriting narrative of civic and economic decline. If I can add a generational postscript in support of David’s thesis, every member of our youngest daughter’s friendship group from Bluecoat School now lives and works outside Liverpool.

It was the nineteenth century philosopher, Friedrich Nietzche who argued that only as an “aesthetic phenomenon” does the tragedy of human existence find its eternal justification, and perhaps it’s only in the exquisite prose and imaginative virtuosity of David’s writing that Liverpool’s own tragic predicament becomes philosophically palatable. I admire David’s resolute determination to find some tiny component of hope, offered in the city’s joyously ephemeral hosting of Eurovision 2023. But does our capacity for celebration, hospitality and togetherness provide the alchemy for a viable economic renaissance? Does it, at best, illuminate Liverpool’s status as a half-city, stripped of its economic and productive assets, now reduced to the sheer potentiality of its human capital?

The idea of Liverpool as a stage set for cultural spectacles and entertainment extravaganzas (hyperbolically described by the city’s cultural supremo, Claire McColgan as “moments of absolute global significance”), is a beguiling substitute for an actual economy, and an ability to offer a livelihood for the generations who continue to depart for more attractive and seemingly successful cities. It’s a vision that also reminds me of another of Italo Calvino’s magical realist parables in his masterpiece novel, Invisible Cities. Sophronia, the half-city of roller-coasters, carousels, Ferris wheels and big tops, where it is the banks, factories, ministries and docks that are dismantled, loaded onto trailers and taken away to their next travelling destination.

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“I fully grasp the deeply heretical nature of this proposition. A ‘One State’ solution for the Liverpool and Manchester City Regions is about as saleable as a one state solution for Israel and Palestine.”

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Two hundred years ago, the realisation that we were a half-city inspired Liverpool’s city fathers to contemplate a project that would have world-changing implications - a genuine moment of “absolute global significance”. Prior to the construction of the world’s first inter-city railway, every human journey between major population centres would be dependent on the locomotive capabilities of the horse. Railways were the harbingers of modernity, compressing time and space, and in this instance, connecting one of the world’s great trading centres with its greatest manufacturing hub. Umbilically conjoined, the two half-cities (the place that trades and the place that makes), became the nexus for Britain’s industrial and imperial prowess for the next hundred years. 

If the railway brought Liverpool and Manchester closer together, recent decades  have been dominated by a football-terrace inspired antagonism aimed at driving us further apart. Liverpool’s antipathy to our more affluent neighbour would seem also to betray more than a slight hint of jealousy, as our rival has greedily accumulated the trappings and status of regional capital.

Rather than resenting Manchester’s success or investing in a strategy of do-or-die competition, is there a smarter and mutually beneficial alternative? Is it time to re-imagine a more symbiotic relationship, that realises that for every British provincial city, the real competition is located 200 miles to the south?

Of course, this is not an original proposition. In the early noughties, Liverpool Leader, Mike Storey and his Manchester counterpart, Richard Leese signed their much lauded Joint Concordat - an agreement only marginally less shocking than the Molotov-Ribbentrop ‘Non-Aggression’ Pact of 1939 between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. The benefits were equally short lived. The agreement was conceived in the golden age of regionalism when under the aegis of John Prescott’s mega-ministry - the Department for the Environment, Transport and the Regions - levelling-up and rebalancing were not mere meaningless mantras but core political imperatives.  For all its good works, the now defunct North West Development Agency, which once employed 500 people to drive the region’s growth, was more of a hindrance than an enabler for a serious rapprochement between the city’s two main economic players. Determined to uphold scrupulous neutrality between Liverpool and Manchester (it’s Warrington-base memorably described by broadcaster and musical impresario Tony Wilson as being located in the “perineum” of the North West), the agency was forged by a powerful Labour Lancashire mafia, with a brief to prevent and constrain the domineering tendencies of the two cities.  

The ill-fated 2001 Joint Concordat between Liverpool and Manchester was only marginally more palatable than the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 which saw the carve up of Poland. Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-H27337 / CC-BY-SA 3.0

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“The idea of Liverpool as a stage set for cultural spectacles and entertainment extravaganzas is a beguiling substitute for an actual economy.”

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The Storey-Leese pact conceded Manchester’s status as regional capital, a painful admission of subservience that probably explains the reluctance of subsequent Liverpool leaders to pursue similar overtures. The Liverpool City Region and Greater Manchester devolution deals, and the election of “great mates” Steve Rotheram and Andy Burnham has seen little practical collaboration, beyond occasional media stunts and chummy get-togethers to compare their favourite home-grown pop tunes. Those who expected more than a Northern Variety Hall double act have thus far been disappointed by devolution projects intent on protecting sub-regional domains and denying the compelling reality of geographic and economic interdependence. 

We’re two cities less than 30 miles apart, whose fuzzy edges and increasingly footloose populations are blind to civic boundaries that no longer delineate where or how people live, work and play. People are already beginning to see and experience the cities as a single urban place - we just need to dismantle some of the physical and administrative obstacles.

It is beyond farcical that train travel between the two city centres is only marginally quicker today than it was when Stephenson’s Rocket completed its maiden journey two centuries ago. At a pre-MIPIM real estate seminar a few years ago, a Liverpool property professional opined that the single biggest boost to Liverpool’s commercial office market would be a 20 minute train service to Manchester city centre. Who knows, it may even have been enough to persuade Liverpool-nurtured companies like the sports fashion-brand, Castore, to stay in a better connected city location instead of moving to our city neighbour (and taking 300 jobs with it). Questioning the benefits of a fully integrated single strategic transport authority to straddle the two city-regions, is equivalent to advocating the abolition of Transport for London and its replacement by two rival authorities with briefs never to talk to each other. 

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“Rather than resenting Manchester’s success or investing in a strategy of do-or-die competition, is there a smarter and mutually beneficial alternative?”

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For those who ask what’s in it for Manchester, the answer is the well attested and quantifiable benefits of economic agglomeration - cost efficiencies, labour pooling, expanded markets, knowledge spill-overs… Whilst working for the think tank, ResPublica on a project to build the economic case for Liverpool’s connection to HS2, I was staggered to hear Manchester’s economic strategist Mike Emmerich admit that his city envied aspects of Liverpool’s asset-base. The hard and soft criteria by which urban theorists like Saskia Sassen measure the credentials of aspiring global cities, seem evenly dispersed between the twin cities of the Mersey Valley. We can’t match Manchester’s international transport connections, its media and knowledge clusters, but neither can they compete with Liverpool’s global brand, our cultural prowess, architectural grandeur and liveability offer.

If transport is the no-brainer, the wider benefits of agglomeration need to be systematically mapped and identified. The amorphous promise of a Northern Powerhouse can only be realised in physical space, and the contiguity of our two city regions make this the most viable location for a re-balancing project. If the North is ever to grow an economic counter-weight to London, then connecting the two closest jigsaw pieces together seems like a sensible undertaking. Whether its land-use planning or plotting economic development, investment and skills strategies, it’s nonsensical for the two city regions to be pursuing their respective goals in blissful oblivion of what is happening on the other side of an arbitrarily contrived line on a map.

Notwithstanding, its invaluable enabling role in gap funding development and infrastructure projects, the North West Development Agency was a political creation without underpinning logic or legitimacy. Were there ever any connecting threads of economic interest between Salford and Penrith? Wilmslow and Barrow-in-Furness? The Agency’s opaque governance, and its tortuous high-wire balancing act, placating a multiplicity of sub-regional agendas and interest groups, inhibited its ability to optimise the potential of the region’s two great economic engines. 

So here comes the controversial bit. Pacts, concordats and convivial personal relationships are simply not sufficient to realise the potential of a new economic relationship between the two city regions - one that acknowledges that their respective asset-bases can be curated for mutual benefit. The only solution is a new governance structure - a devolution model with one Metro Mayor and one Combined Authority. I fully grasp the deeply heretical nature of this proposition, and the threat that it seems to pose to the identity and autonomy of a city that suspects it will be the junior player in any such arrangement. But are identities any more compromised in a ‘Twin City Region’ than they are within the current dispensation? St Helens, Sefton, Wirral, Wigan, Bolton amongst others would probably argue not. The integrity and jurisdiction of the respective city councils and other local authorities would not be compromised - we would only be pooling functions and responsibilities that are already acknowledged to be regional, and projecting them onto a bigger and less artificially contrived regional canvas.

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“The only solution is a new governance structure - a devolution model with one Metro Mayor and one Combined Authority.”

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Once upon a time, Liverpool and Manchester were authorities under the even more commodious administrative umbrella of Lancashire County Council, and as I‘ve mentioned, more recently, through the North West Development Agency, we were content to buy into the concept of a North West regional project conspicuously lacking any democratic accountability. 

In a Twitter / X exchange with Liverpolitan a few weeks ago, I was asked to defend this joint governance proposition by pointing to a successful or established similar model elsewhere in the world. In the US, the twin cities of Minneapolis and St Paul, and of Dallas and Fort Worth, and the urban centres of the San Francisco Bay Area have come together in different ways to pool planning, transportation and economic development responsibilities. Closer to home, the Ruhr Regional Association in Germany exercises both a statutory and enabling role in areas including planning, infrastructure, economic development and environmental protection for the cities of Dortmund, Duisburg, Essen and Bochum. But even if there is no precise template elsewhere, should this be an inhibitor to the cities that built the world’s first inter-city railway, and that pioneered many of the most progressive advances in civic governance in the 19th and early 20th centuries? 

In the absence of compelling practical arguments against the proposition, the most likely and persuasive objection will be that the mutual rivalry runs too deep, the antagonism is simply too intense and has festered too long. A ‘One State’ solution for the Liverpool and Manchester City Regions is about as saleable as a one state solution for Israel and Palestine. Maybe it’s an argument that requires a solution or a process rather than a rebuttal. In truth, antipathy is a quite recent addition to a history of rivalry that owes more than a little to the intensity of the competition between the country’s two most successful football teams. Exorcism perhaps requires a practical project, an enthusing collaboration that focuses on shared cultural attributes and ambitions. Somewhere not far away such an idea is maturing, but I will leave it to its progenitors to expand, perhaps on this platform, and maybe very soon.

Of course, there is another motive and spur for this idea which relates to the abject failure of governance within the city of Liverpool and the continuing inability of its dysfunctional political class to nurture or curate those incipient possibilities that so rarely reach fulfilment. The uprooting of Castore from Liverpool to Manchester is an instructive case study, but so too are the games companies, the biotech businesses, legal and insurance firms that have hatched in Liverpool and gone on to prosper elsewhere. Maybe we need governance less rooted in parochial politics and less constrained by cultural legacy. To borrow an analogy from Iain McGilchrist’s Divided Brain hypothesis, perhaps Manchester’s busy-bee utilitarianism and non-conformist pragmatism is the left hemisphere counterpoint to Liverpool’s wistful dreaminess (even our civic emblem is an imaginary being). Is it just possible that our divergent dispositions and outlooks are not actually a prescription for unending antagonism but the formula for a fruitful alchemy?

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Jon Egan is a former electoral strategist for the Labour Party and has worked as a public affairs and policy consultant in Liverpool for over 30 years. He helped design the communication strategy for Liverpool’s Capital of Culture bid and advised the city on its post-2008 marketing strategy. He is an associate researcher with think tank, ResPublica.

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Pact! What Pact? An Insider’s View on the Lost Battle to Defeat Labour

Jon Egan

In the run-up to the 2023 Local Elections in Liverpool, three men working in the shadows, tried to corral the opposition parties into a pact capable of doing some serious damage to Labour at the polls. Described as an exercise in herding cats, the enterprise was ultimately doomed to failure, as factional intransigience, personality clashes and party ambitions took hold, before the electorate then delivered the killing blow. This is the inside story of that failed mission told by one of those men, political consultant, Jon Egan.

“Why are we doing this?” is a question that former BBC Radio Merseyside broadcaster, Liam Fogarty and I have been asking ourselves on and off for more than twenty years.

Even before our involvement in the now largely forgotten Liverpool Democracy Commission, we have been kept up at night wondering how to fix Liverpool's broken civic democracy. Years pumped into a losing battle, the odds very much against us. Have we been wasting our time?

The context for the latest phase of anguished introspection was this year’s local elections in Liverpool which, as you may have noticed, returned Labour to power with an increased majority on the City Council. Before explaining the efforts that Liam, myself and Stephen Yip, a former City Mayor candidate and founder of the charity, KIND, made to avert this seemingly predestined eventuality, it’s worth taking the time to fully comprehend and meditate upon the extraordinary fact of Labour’s victory.

There is no simple or rational explanation for Labour’s achievement, although the campaigning skills of my former Labour Party colleague and strategist, Sheila Murphy need to be duly recognised. The Labour campaign was a brilliantly executed masterclass in misdirection, diversion and manipulation worthy of the illusionist, Derren Brown - wiping the collective memory of the city’s voters and convincing them that their party bore absolutely no responsibility for the endemic chaos, waste, corruption and ineptitude of the last ten years. This election, apparently, had little to do with how a struggling city, effectively governed by colonial administrators, was going to put its house in order. No, it turns out the script was the old familiar one about sending a message to the city's historic arch-nemesis - The Tories.

The result, I suppose, proves precisely how difficult it is for people to overcome addictive and self-harmful habits like voting Labour in Liverpool. Maybe what the city needs is not so much new councillors, but counselling.

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‘The Labour campaign was a brilliantly executed masterclass in misdirection, diversion and manipulation worthy of the illusionist, Derren Brown.’

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In The Myth of Sisyphus, the writer Albert Camus defined the absurd as the irreconcilable gulf that separates human aspirations from the world’s predisposition to thwart them. The tragic image of Sisyphus struggling to roll his enormous boulder to the top of the hill, already sensing the futility of his labours against the forces of gravity, is an apt metaphor for the investment in time that Liam and myself have made in initiatives, campaigns and conversations undertaken over many years in the hope of making Liverpool’s politics function normally. So if the narrative of this election campaign carries the darkly comic resonances of dramatists, Beckett and Ionesco, and their Theatre of the Absurd, then this is not literary pastiche, but rather the perfect paradigm for Liverpool politics. And in that spirit, it seems appropriate to start not at the beginning, but at the end.

One of the most inexplicable aspects of the election result, was the way that the defeated parties far from despairing at the loss of an historic opportunity, were to varying degrees seemingly satisfied (or at worst only mildly disappointed) with their less than modest achievements. For the Liverpool Community Independents getting only three of their cohort re-elected was at least ‘a springboard’ from which to progress. For Green Party Leader, Tom Crone, “bitter disappointment” extended only as far as lamenting the loss of one target ward (Festival Gardens) by a single vote.

For Richard Kemp, the eminence grise of Liverpool Liberal Democracy, the pitiful addition of three councillors, would give his party “plenty of time for reflection on how the council should work, and where the city should be going.” One wonders how after four decades as a City Councillor, Richard was still trying to figure out these rather elementary conundrums, before he finally decided to fall on his sword and announce his long anticipated retirement as party leader.

So let’s rewind to the beginning, or at least the beginning of Act 2. Act 1 being the heroic, but ultimately doomed campaign by Stephen Yip, to be elected as City Mayor in 2021.

Running a surprisingly close and creditable second to Labour’s Joanne Anderson , Yip’s undoing was the stubborn refusal of Green Party Leader, Tom Crone and the ubiquitous Kemp to stand aside to allow for the possibility of deliverance from a disgraced and discredited Labour administration. The 2021 election seemed, at the time, to be a decisive “never again” moment, with penitential expressions of regret from Liberal Democrats and Greens and pledges to learn the lesson of fractured opposition.

Like trying to roll a rock up a hill. Now more than ever, Liverpool’s opposition parties needed to master the alien vernacular of co-operation.

So to Act 2

Following the publication of the Caller Report in 2021 it was decreed that Liverpool should abandon the baroque and inscrutable election-by-thirds system, and instead adopt an all-out election on new boundaries with the majority of councillors to be elected from single member wards. Now more than ever, Liverpool’s opposition parties needed to master the alien vernacular of co-operation. Seemingly unable to conduct conversations between themselves, the task of scoping the opportunities for an electoral pact fell to myself, Stephen Yip and Liam Fogarty. Having manoeuvred the boulder to within inches (well maybe a couple of hundred metres) of the summit in 2021, we felt that one more effort was something we owed both to ourselves and the people of Liverpool. Far from delivering the new dispensation promised following her election, the era of Anderson 2.0 (Joanne) was notable mainly for its dismal continuity - a botched energy contract costing the city millions, hundreds of millions more written off in uncollected tax and rates, revelations concerning councillors dodging parking fines and extended roles for Government Commissioners taking responsibility for even more substandard and failing services.

The process of encouraging political and electoral co-operation between Liverpool’s opposition factions began with a discrete gathering at Richard Kemp’s house in the summer of last year. Treated to copious quantities of sausages and dips, a generally constructive exchange with Richard and his Lib Dem colleague, Kris Brown, concluded with a suggestion that Liam attend their upcoming policy conference to raise a few issues and provide an outsider perspective on the challenges of the upcoming election. Both from this gathering and the subsequent conference, we sensed a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the idea of any form of electoral pact. If this was to happen,  pressure rather than polite persuasion might need to be applied.

By the end of the year, we had started informal conversations with friends and contacts within the other three opposition groups - The Liberal Party (an eccentric relic from the pre-Alliance / Lib Dem era sustained in Liverpool through the hyperactive exertions of its charismatic talisman, Cllr Steve Radford), the Liverpool Community Independents (a party formed by dissenting former Labour councillors primarily disillusioned by cuts and corruption) and the Green Party. With the prospect of another squandered opportunity on the horizon, we resolved to take the decisive step of inviting the leaders to a more formal gathering hosted by Stephen Yip at the HQ of his charity, KIND. The tactical approach was to corral the three most willing participants into an agreement and then publicly challenge or shame the Liberal Democrats to come on board.

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‘It began with a discrete gathering at Richard Kemp’s house in the summer of last year, where we were treated to copious quantities of sausages and dips.’

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Eschewing sausages for club biscuits (salted caramel flavour), the more business-like ambience of the gathering cut straight to the quick. Without an agreement from opposition parties (all of whom occupied terrain to the left of the centre) we would be facing the prospect of another four years of Labour misrule. Apart from pointing out the mutual benefits of a pact, we offered to provide whatever practical, organisational and campaigning resources we could muster from the networks created during Stephen Yip’s mayoral campaign. Admittedly, these were no match for the Labour legions, but we believed they could help the disparate groups to sharpen core messages, target more efficiently and raise the quality and potency of communication collateral. These resources were conditional on the reality of a pact and a clear indication that its participants were putting city before party.

From the outset the Liberals and Community Independents were fully and unequivocally committed to the principle and practicalities of a pact. For Tom Crone and the Green Party, the proposition was clearly more problematic. Promising to take the idea away for "consideration", we were left with an uneasy sense that history was repeating itself.  It was unclear at the time, and indeed still is, by what means of mysterious convocation, the Liverpool Green Party reaches its decisions. With Tom intimating that the national party was instructing them to field the maximum possible number of candidates, the sad implication was that regime change in Liverpool was less of a priority than adhering to the diktat from on high. After several days of radio silence, I was tipped off that Tom would be attending a film event at St Michael's church, and it might be a useful opportunity to see how things were progressing. Our conversation, sadly, revealed that they weren't, and that even a three party pact was becoming an unlikely, if not entirely illusory, possibility.

Stephen Yip's description of our undertaking as an exercise in herding cats was suddenly complicated by the unexpected arrival of a much more exotic species defying all known zoological and political categorisations. The first in a series of audiences with hotelier and property developer, Lawrence Kenwright, took place in late December in the sepulchral gloom of the Alma de Cuba bar, formerly St Peter's church. The bar had been the venue for a series of revivalist-style rallies at which Kenwright had railed against council corruption, presenting himself as the figure-head for a new, popular movement called Liberate Liverpool, that would sweep aside the cliques and cabals that had brought the city to its current parlous state.

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‘It was unclear at the time, and indeed still is, by what means of mysterious convocation, the Liverpool Green Party reaches its decisions.’

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I was deputed to conduct the initial conversation, that provided a fascinating insight into Kenwright's character and motivation, the history of his relationship with the City Council and Mayor Joe Anderson, and the ambitions underpinning his political project. Kenwright's almost visceral determination to unseat Labour was evident; what was less clear was his precise role in the project, and the means and method by which it was to be achieved.

Whilst it was easy to understand the motivations behind Liberate Liverpool, and its attraction as an antidote to an out of touch and self-serving politics, it was difficult to believe that it offered any kind of remedy. Symptoms are not cures, and Liberate Liverpool’s attraction for cranks, conspiracists and far-right interlopers was perhaps an inevitable consequence of its febrile genesis and almost millenarian rhetoric. Some good and sincere people answered the call only to be sent into battle with the campaigning equivalent of peashooters and water pistols. At a subsequent meeting (accompanied this time by Liam Fogarty and ex-Labour Councillor Maria Toolan), we embarked on what we thought was a subtle policy of dissuasion, politely pointing out the inherent flaws of a campaign targeting "people who don't vote" and relying almost exclusively on social media, only to be accused by a Kenwright acolyte of "disrespecting Lawrence."

Our approaches were an attempt to scope the albeit remote possibility of identifying suitably vetted independent candidates who could be assumed into a broader-based Clean-Up Coalition. It is an indicator of our desperation that this hope was ever entertained.

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‘We embarked on a subtle policy of dissuasion, politely pointing out the inherent flaws of a campaign targeting "people who don't vote" only to be accused by a Kenwright acolyte of "disrespecting Lawrence."'

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As February rolled into March, our efforts became simultaneously more modest and more desperate. Following advice from a sympathetic insider, we were advised to bypass Kemp and re-pitch the idea of an electoral pact to the Lib Dems through the party's former leader and campaign supremo, Lord Mike Storey, who we later discovered was to stand as a candidate in Childwall. Alas Stephen Yip’s conversation with Storey was even more emphatically negative than the sausage-gate soiree with Kemp months earlier. 

It was clear we needed to explore more pragmatic alternatives. If not a city-wide pact, perhaps a nod and a wink understanding to avoid actively campaigning in each other's target seats? Maybe also an agreement around some core commitments to improve transparency and accountability, combat corruption and restore public confidence in the City Council? Initially, Richard Kemp sounded refreshingly and surprisingly up for it, but with the fatal complication that some of their target seats were also target seats for the Greens and the Liberals. Nods and winks would have to be restricted to the safest Labour seats in Liverpool where none of the opposition parties entertained serious hopes of winning. In other words, for show only. Meanwhile, Stephen Yip drafted four pledges on transparency and corruption, which were immediately endorsed by the Community Independents and the Liberal Party. The Lib Dems, however, would not sign up; the response published on the But What Does Richard Kemp Think? blog, a depressingly patronising and public epistle "explaining" that the proposals were either illegal, already in place (due largely to his efforts) or would be a waste of money. It seemed futile to point out to Kemp that the proposal for an Independently-chaired Standards Board was not only perfectly lawful, but had been initially drafted for Stephen's Yip’s 2021 manifesto by Howard Winik, who was now a Liberal Democrat candidate.

Unlike his predecessor, does the Lib Dem’s new leader, Carl Cashman have the imagination or inclination to detach his party from its comfortable civic niche in South Liverpool suburbia?

For me, this was perhaps the final and conclusive evidence that laid bare the true nature of Liverpool Liberal Democrats and their deep complicity in a council whose corrupting and dysfunctional culture long predates the shortcomings of the Joe Anderson era. They are not, in my view, an "Opposition Party" in any meaningful sense of the word, but are more akin to the tame collaborators in the sham democracies of the Soviet Bloc - the Liverpool equivalent of the Democratic Farmers Party of East Germany. They have no desire to fundamentally reform or reset a moribund civic culture, but are content to bide their time in the hope that circumstances will grant them an opportunity to preside over its decrepit edifice. In one sense, Liberate Liverpool were right; the Liberal Democrats are not part of a solution, but are an intrinsic and intractable part of the problem. Whether Kemp’s much younger successor, the neophyte Carl Cashman, has the imagination or inclination to detach his party from its comfortable civic niche and the bucolic pastures of South Liverpool suburbia, will largely determine whether Liverpool's local democracy remains a hollow charade, or becomes an empowering mechanism for change.

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‘The Lib Dems are not an "Opposition Party" in any meaningful sense of the word, but are more akin to the tame collaborators in the sham democracies of the Soviet Bloc - the Liverpool equivalent of the Democratic Farmers Party of East Germany.’

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Epilogue

It is the tragic-comic circularity of the narrative that makes Liverpool politics an absurdist drama. The interminable wait for Godot - an intervention, a new structure, a new political alignment, a salvific figure able to break the cycle of failure, corruption and chaos that has blighted our city for as long as anyone can remember.

On the day of polling, I was helping Maria Toolan with some last minute door knocking to encourage supporters to get out and vote in the City Centre North ward. She was already sensing with fatalist resignation, that her efforts to unseat two former Labour colleagues had failed. "The problem is," she lamented "people aren't bothered about waste and corruption, it's what they expect from the city council and they don't believe that it's ever going to change."

This is the suffocating dead weight of Liverpool politics, an oppressive inertia and sense of fatalism engendered by decades of broken promises, betrayed trust and shameful failure. It's the gravitational drag that immobilises progress and snuffs out any glimmer of a more honest and hopeful politics.

Labour's strategy understands and exploits this endemic cynicism. It doesn't really matter how badly we've governed Liverpool, this is a Labour city and elections cannot alter this brute existential reality. Sending a message to the Tories might actually seem like a more worthwhile place to put an ‘X’ than investing in a hope for something better, when you suspect that this isn't even a logical possibility. Little wonder that 8 out of 10 Liverpool voters decided to stay at home.

Would an electoral pact have unseated Labour? Would it have signalled to voters that there was a tangible possibility of an alternative administration? It's hard to say, but looking at the results and totting up the number of seats where competing opposition parties on the progressive wing of politics won more votes than the Labour majority, it cannot be completely discounted.

Labour mis-fire. By personalising the campaign against Gorst, they had also localised it. In Garston, the election was no longer a rehearsal for a General Election. It was about the honesty and integrity of individuals and their credentials to represent their community - weak territory for Labour to fight on. Photo from Twitter @Pablo8485

If there is cause for hope, it was in the response to what was one of the most deplorable manifestations of Liverpool Labour's darker instincts. The officially sanctioned Labour campaign, scripted from on-high and professionally disseminated under the supervision of Sheila Murphy and their Regional Office, was a vacuous mash-up of kick-the-Tories and Eurovision-phoria. But beneath the sanitised veneer another more vicious and toxic campaign was being waged against Community Independent candidates who had originally been elected under Labour colours. Fake social media accounts became platforms to abuse, ridicule and defame the Community Independents with particular venom aimed at Sam Gorst, a former Labour Councillor seeking re-election in Garston.

The ferocity of the campaign against Gorst reached its nadir with a shamefully deceptive leaflet masquerading as a community newsletter which raked up Gorst's old social media posts, and more seriously, falsely implied that he had used his position as a councillor to jump the social housing queue. Within an hour of the leaflet being issued, we launched our final, and perhaps only effective contribution to the election campaign. A round-robin email was despatched to secure the support of the city's four opposition leaders in a joint denunciation of Labour's malicious and dishonest leaflet. And to their credit, Kemp,  Radford, Crone and the Community Independent's Leader, Alan Gibbons all replied with personalised quotes for a media release within 30 minutes. The unprecedented show of unity secured positive media coverage, that was followed by The Echo's political correspondent, Liam Thorp exposing the tell-tale fingerprints of Labour on the scurrilous social media accounts.

An otherwise faultless Labour campaign had slipped up. By personalising the campaign against Gorst and his running mate Lucy Williams, they had also localised it. This election and the campaign against Alan Gibbons in Orrell Park, were no longer just dummy run rehearsals for a General Election or a vote of thanks for delivering Eurovision; they were about the honesty and integrity of individuals and their credentials to represent their community. Gorst, Williams and Gibbons' victories may or may not be a platform for the future growth of the Liverpool Community Independents Party, but they are perhaps a hopeful intimation that gravity doesn't always win.

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Jon Egan is a former electoral strategist for the Labour Party and has worked as a public affairs and policy consultant in Liverpool for over 30 years. He helped design the communication strategy for Liverpool’s Capital of Culture bid and advised the city on its post-2008 marketing strategy. He is an associate researcher with think tank, ResPublica.

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Can Liverpool be Liberated from Labour?

Local Elections 2023

Paul Bryan

This article by Liverpolitan Editor, Paul Bryan was published by UnHerd on 3rd May 2023 on the eve of the 2023 Local Elections in Liverpool. To read the whole feature visit…

UnHerd / 2023 /05

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Before Liverpool can bask in the joy of hosting next week’s Eurovision Song Contest, it must first contend with tomorrow’s local elections — and the rounds of mudslinging that have come with it. Take one of Labour’s election pamphlets, pushed through the letterboxes of residents in the south of the city. Disguised under the banner of Garston Resident News, the leaflet mined old social media posts belonging to independent councillor, Sam Gorst, who had been expelled from the Labour Party in December 2021 for associating with Labour Against the Witchhunt, a group opposed to “the purge” of pro-Corbyn supporters for alleged antisemitism.

Under the headline “Sickening”, Gorst was criticised for historic posts in which he called Queen Elizabeth “a useless bitch” and the Jewish former Liverpool Wavertree MP Luciana Berger, who eventually resigned from the party, a “hideous traitor”. The pamphlet also claimed that he lived in a “leafy” area and insinuated that he had jumped the queue on social housing, although that accusation is contested.

But if the intention was to make an opponent look bad, Labour may have shot itself in the foot. A joint statement released by the Liberal Democrats, The Liverpool Community Independents, The Green Party and the Liberal Party described the leaflet as “cynical”, “dishonest” and “shameful”. Their calls for a clean fight, however, have fallen on deaf ears, not least because the mud is being thrown in all directions amid widely reported allegations of Labour corruption and incompetence.

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“In cities with a more contested political complexion, one might expect such failures to be severely punished at the ballot box. But this is Liverpool, and ousting Labour is the toughest of political challenges.”

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Snippet taken from a Labour election pamphlet disguised under the banner of Garston Resident News,

To read the whole article visit…

https://unherd.com/2023/05/can-liverpool-be-liberated-from-labour/

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Paul Bryan is the Editor and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a freelance content writer, script editor, communications strategist and creative coach.

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The tales we tell. Why Scouse stories of strength and resistance matter

Patrick Devaney

In a recent op-ed entitled, Why we need to stop banging on about Thatcher and the Toxteth bloody riots, Liverpolitan Editor, Paul Bryan argued that focusing on the city’s past risks pinning Scousers as “irrelevant, backward-looking, and worst of all, passive in the face of the present” and can offer us only “a shrunken vision of our place in the world… a tiny Scouse Republic of Retreat.” I feel compelled to respond to this as I believe there is no need to look down on the hard times the city has been through or shy away from the broken images of urban decay that haunt our past. It is what it is, and we are who we are. There is no shame in who we are and highlighting the challenges we’ve faced in the past does not mark us with a “Petty Scouser” point of view.

Rather, for me, one of the key reasons we shouldn’t be turning our backs on the past is the fact that, unfortunately, the future increasingly now looks more like the past. It’s not like austerity ever really went away, but now, with austerity 2.0 biting up and down the country, we need the strength to pull together more than ever. Furthermore, there’s no reason to think that the outward-looking agency Paul craves cannot be found in the extreme challenges the city’s inhabitants have faced together. Communal adversity can spur social and political movements that change the world. However, there are limits to how far identity can take us and I intend to show in this response article that while our common heritage offers us strength in our identity, that very identity can only take us so far because of the very ideals of justice and kinship that it is built upon.

For a prime example of the power shared adversity offers we can look to New York in the 1960s and 1970s where we see similar images of urban decline to those that grip the imagination when thinking about the Toxteth Riots and 1980s Liverpool. Influential American city planner, Robert Moses, carved out city projects from roads and bridges to housing and parks that treated the existing New York landscape like a blank sheet of paper. With his eyes on the suburbs and the ubiquity of the motorcar, he cut through densely packed working-class and ethnic residential communities to construct the Cross-Bronx Expressway. His plan led to the demolition of hundreds of residential and commercial buildings and displaced the families and businesses they housed. Moses also enacted a slum clearance programme that designated many more densely populated and stable Bronx neighbourhoods inhabited by mostly working and lower-middle class Jewish, Italian, German, Irish and Black communities as being slums. Ultimately,  Moses forced more than 170,000 people to abandon their homes for demolition in the interests of “progress” and “modernisation”. However, despite this marginalisation and wanton destruction, something began to stir in those ruined blocks and devastated neighbourhoods. Underneath the busy expressway that the better-off used daily to pass them by, youngsters in the Bronx began defining themselves through the formation of a new culture built on spray paint and tags, breakbeats and heavy bass, rhymes and ‘disses’ and pops and locks. In the face of Moses’ actions, Hip Hop was born and has been acting as a force for cultural and social revolution ever since.

Finding hope in adversity. Egyptian rapper, Mohamed El Deeb thinks Hip Hop played a key role in the Arab Spring revolt.

It all sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Social dislocation, economic deprivation and racial discrimination wrought by an uncaring overseer that cares not for the people of certain communities. So, what do we do then, when our history is filled with similar social dynamics? Do we turn our backs on events because they’re “negative”, or build upon them because they’re real? As the Bronx experience clearly shows, when times are hard, they can fuse a shared sense of identity within the communities that live through them. This can be a source of strength so powerful it can push even the most marginalised in society to change the world.

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‘So, what do we do when our history is filled with similar social dynamics? Do we turn our backs on events because they’re “negative”, or build upon them because they’re real?’

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In fact, nation-states are built upon that very power. The shared myths and heritage we teach ourselves and the persecutions we have faced together are what bind us to people we have never and will never meet. From wars fought and lost, to great works of art, pride in scientific advances, songs and literature or notable sporting moments, our shared experiences and memories, both first-hand and passed down, all contribute to a common idea of identity that moves us beyond the limits of our own personal horizons. That’s why I think it is so self-defeating to turn our backs on the common myths we share as people from Liverpool. They offer a source of strength that can power us to change the world again.

These stories from our past are not restrictive either. We don’t need to get caught up in definitions when discussing our common heritage. Rather than defining who we are, it creates a shared foundation upon which we all can build as people of this city, whoever we may be. A gravitational pull around which we, no matter our background, are all orbiting in our own way. This includes many potential variations among us with some focusing on the implications of this story and others on their recollections of that event. Our common heritage does not lock us into our past, but rather offers us a rich tapestry upon which we all have the chance to make a mark, shaping and defining our ideas of this city and who we are as we move into the future. We are in charge here.

If we turn our gaze north of the border to Scotland, we can even see how these common myths can generate real political power. The Scots, whom people from Liverpool should be proud to call brothers and sisters, have a recognised nationality that has enabled them to fight back against the diktats of Westminster in ways we can only dream of. Scotland’s common myths form a foundational basis for a recognised national identity that offers them real political power, while ours do not.

Interestingly, however, while huge swathes of the Scottish national identity undoubtedly come from centuries of wars with the English, there is no denying the fact that it was Edinburgh and London together that spread the borders of the British Empire from one end of the world to the other just as much as it was Liverpool and Glasgow too. I would argue then that much of what feeds the Scottish National Party’s continued impressive showing at recent Scottish elections is more to do with the Poll Tax and Prime Ministers than it is to do with English kings like Edward I. If Scottish nationalism in its current form is built at least in part on the marginalisation it feels today, then it is built on the same marginalisation felt in Liverpool, as well as communities across the North of England, through the Midlands, and into Yorkshire. Therefore, despite our common imperial history and the decades of marginalisation we’ve lived through together, Scotland has a much better deal than the rest of us. Scottish common myths have delivered free universities and free prescriptions while ours, even though they are similar in nature, see us with Conservative commissioners running our city.

Clearly then we can see strength in communal stories and shared identities but now it is time to examine how our communal stories and our shared identities are incompatible with these deterministic types of identity politics. For me, our heritage is not defined by what happened to us or, even worse, by what ‘they’ did to us; I see us as being defined by how we acted in those circumstances. When the time came to say no, we said no; when things went too far, we pulled them back; when they attacked us, we stayed strong together; and when they denied us justice, we did not give up the fight. Yes, we have swallowed a lot of “bitter pills”, as mentioned in the article I felt compelled to respond to here, but those bitter pills are not the focus of our gaze when we peer into the past. Instead, we are searching for and leaning on the common strength we found within ourselves to swallow them and keep going, together. It is not the Hillsborough disaster that defines us but the decades-long fight for justice.

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‘Yes, we have swallowed a lot of “bitter pills”, but they are not the focus of our gaze when we peer into the past. Instead, we are leaning on the common strength we found within ourselves to swallow them and keep going.’ It is not the Hillsborough disaster that defines us but the decades-long fight for justice.’

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Our heritage is built upon solidarity and standing together in the face of adversity. Yes, the idea of being “Scouse, not English” stems from a long history filled with gunboats on the Mersey, contrition over our role in the slave trade, and solidarity and action in the face of marginalisation, but I believe making our identity political in nature would be incompatible with the ties that bind us.

This is because a key point here is that our stories mustn’t simply be cartoons and scare stories to tell our kids. There needs to be substance behind them for them to have real meaning. Yes, Thatcher is a scary spectre from our past, but it is because of the real actions she took against the city. Managed decline was real and, in many ways, with central government commissioners overseeing the city right now, it still is. It’s not enough to simply go on about Thatcher; the people of Liverpool must stand for what she was trying to stamp out. Her war on society in support of international finance and global market forces tore the country apart, but in Liverpool, we stood strong and fought back against the propaganda levelled against us and our neighbours. There is no need to mention Murdoch’s rag by name, but by turning our back on the hate it peddles we have set ourselves apart in hearts and minds from our compatriots who are more readily exposed to the bile it spews.

Therefore, despite our unique perspective on the British experience, it is what we must stand for that means the notion of being “Scouse, not English” can only take the people of this city so far. An independent scouse republic on the banks of the royal blue Mersey, although intriguing to imagine, would be hard to square with our relationship with justice. To pull ourselves apart from neighbours who have shared our hard times would be to abandon them to the malicious will of a common tormentor. Yes, we can celebrate who we are and shine a light on the transgressions of the state but when it counts, we must stand together.

Finally, it is important to reiterate that our stories from our past couldn’t be more relevant to our future and the challenging times that lay ahead. We need the strength they give us and dare I say it, people up and down the country need it too. The community spirit needed to stare injustice in the face and stand for what is right, no matter the odds. We can’t and shouldn’t turn our backs on that now. We’ve been here before and as a city, we are stronger for it. If it is a question of image, then we should own it. The message should be don’t feel sorry for us because of the difficult times behind us; we own who we were, who we are, and who we will be. In fact, don’t worry, this city, for all we’ve been through together, is here for you. The difficult times we have experienced as a city equip us to help anybody who needs it with the difficult times ahead that we all will share.

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Patrick Devaney is from Liverpool but lives in Barcelona, Spain where he works as Editor of the Digital Future Society Think Tank. He also works as a consultant for UNESCO on the digital transformation of education. You can tweet Patrick at @PatrickDevaney_ or reach out to him on LinkedIn.

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Why we should stop banging on about Thatcher and the Toxteth Bloody Riots

Paul Bryan

My personal experience of the 1981 Toxteth Riots existed, as for so many others in Liverpool, solely on television. The nightly news reports showed lines of police officers cowering under shields as youths hurled stones and set light to cars and buildings. I didn’t know why it was happening but I knew it was exciting and so did my friends – as if through some mechanism of the collective unconscious we quickly turned it into a street game, unimaginatively called ‘Toxteth Riots’. The rules were fairly simple. All you had to do was clutch a metal bin lid and defend yourself from rocks and stones hurled somewhat half-heartedly by your mates. The winner was the one who could stick it out for the longest. Writing about this now, I’ve only just realised, we were instinctively putting ourselves in the shoes of the police. They at least seemed understandable. Still, it didn’t hold our attention for long. We got bored of it after two nights.

If only I could say the same about the national media. 41 years later and they’re still using the Toxteth Riots as the go-to framing device for just about any story on Liverpool. Of course, in no way do I mean to belittle the experiences of those who were there, or those who suffered under the social forces that made life more difficult. But for me growing up, the riots always felt like something distant, from some other Liverpool, far off and largely irrelevant. If anything, the Toxteth Riots were a boon – they gave me the chance to meet TV scarecrow, Worzel Gummidge at the International Garden Festival three years later, thanks to the intervention of Michael Heseltine, unofficially crowned the Minister for Merseyside.

I mention this personal story because I’ve noticed a tendency in the media and in political circles to describe Liverpool as a single unit, with a single, monolithic outlook and I find this approach unhealthy and untrue. The Toxteth Riots as history and metaphor have become something of an unquestionable foundation stone in our understanding of Liverpool’s journey. I’m not for one minute doubting their significance, but merely wish to flag that, due to the vicarious nature in which they were experienced by many, the events will never speak to us all in the same way and I think that’s worth acknowledging given the sometimes over-simplified, stripped-down caricature of ‘Scouse’ tales that we are often encouraged to identify with. And if that applies to someone who was alive at the time, you can bet it will apply even more to those who were as yet unborn.

The Toxteth Riots sit as the starting point of a master narrative that is told and retold ad finitum. Typically, it’s a story pitched as one of strife and rebirth – a city on its knees rising phoenix-like from the ashes with the regeneration that followed. Either that or it’s used to evidence our home town’s long history of racial inequality. There are further beats in the story of course and usually they point to ‘basket-case’ – a city that just can’t seem to catch a break or get its house in order. A place that is frankly perplexing. Journalists visiting Liverpool tell the same story, time after time, yet they never tire of it, new facts on the ground serving merely to embellish an already familiar pattern.  

It would be easy to point the finger at outsiders here, but this game plays out amongst Liverpool’s inhabitants too and I’ve begun to wonder… does the incessant focus on the 1980s (and we must throw the hate figure that is Margaret Thatcher into the same pot) does the constant repetition serve the city’s best interests? Do these references still yield insight or are they just a reheating of old battles, about as useful to understanding Liverpool today as the Suez crisis is to making sense of Britain’s contemporary approach to foreign policy?

A case in point. This week, the Mayor of Liverpool, Joanne Anderson was interviewed by a journalist from the left-leaning New Statesman magazine, enticed no doubt by the city’s hosting of the Labour Party Conference. Ostensibly about Liverpool’s current political crisis, the article began like this… “In 1981, the violent arrest of a young black man near Granby Street in Toxteth, Liverpool, led to nine days of rioting.” 

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“Journalists visiting Liverpool tell the same story, time after time, yet they never tire of it, new facts on the ground serving merely to embellish an already familiar pattern.”

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What followed was a tick list from the unofficial media guide to Liverpool which we presume is handed out by the NCTJ on journalism graduation day. Margaret Thatcher, ‘managed decline’, European Capital of Culture and the regeneration of the Albert Dock, Derek “Degsy” Hatton and the Militant Tendency, gang warfare and the shootings of young children, now sadly updated with new names. Welcome to Fleet Street’s version of Punxsutawney where we’re all doomed to live the same day, every day. Bill Murray, at least, found a way out. In Liverpool, we’re still looking.

Truth is, the story could have been about anything – crime, the opening of an arts festival, or an important football match and it could have been published anywhere – The Telegraph, The Guardian, The New York Times or Unherd. It doesn’t really matter what the initial prompt is, as long as the story stays the same. Liverpool, the city, is perennially cast as the troubled lead in a Shakespearean morality play, fuelled by righteous anger, touched by tragedy, let down by treachery, now sadly a watchword for – (insert your favoured macro-political, agenda-driven blank here).

Refreshingly, the Mayor was not too impressed with the New Statesman article. On Twitter, Joanne claimed the writer had “focused on a whole load of scouse stereotypes” and accused him of “lazy journalism”. I found myself in agreement so I reached out to the Mayor for further comment, and to my surprise she replied. What she had to say, for a local Labour leader is, I think, important and worth hearing. But you’ll have to wait a while. You see, first I have this theory and it involves turning our attention inwards. It’s the real meat in this piece. For as much as we might want to blame the media, I believe that the press are, in large part, reflecting back what we as a city put out about ourselves.

Sometimes, our own worst enemy

Compare these two statements. The first is by a journalist, Oliver Brown, Chief Sports Writer at the Telegraph, who was writing about Liverpool’s complex relationship with the establishment in light of some fans failing to observe a minute’s silence to mark the death of the Queen.

“Liverpool is a city that feels that it has been shunted to the margins of British society. It is scarcely an unfounded view.”

The second is from Kim Johnson, MP for Liverpool Riverside who was describing her sense of betrayal at Labour Leader, Keir Starmer writing in the Sun in 2021.

“We are the Socialist republic of Liverpool, a city that marches to the beat of a different drum, a resilient city that will always come back fighting.  But we have a long memory and will not forget this betrayal by the leader of the Labour Party, in our Labour city.”

Can you spot the similarities? For starters, they are both quite careless in their use of the collective – back to that sense of the monolithic, singular opinion to represent the Liverpool way. But they also both spoke to something else – a powerful sense of grievance baked into the city identity. Kim Johnson’s quote in particular was the perfect crystallisation of a view that has become increasingly noisy in recent years – the idea that Liverpool is ‘Scouse, not English’ – a place apart, waged in a perpetual battle to get a fair deal, coalescing around some sense of the ‘Other’.

A few weeks back, the Liverpool Echo’s Dan Haygarth, in a quite remarkable article, attempted to explain why so many in the city reject national identity. As explanations go it was comprehensive, yet strangely unconvincing, but it was a perfect reflection of what passes for common sense around here. Supposedly, our 19th-century Irish roots had turned us into ‘rebels’ sceptical of authority; our coastal location transformed us into natural internationalists who looked out rather than in; a history of being ‘let down by the establishment’ first by the Thatcher government in the 1980s and then over the Hillsborough disaster had for many ‘broken the city’s relationship with England beyond repair.’ Throw in the generosity of EU European Objective 1 funding followed by savage post-2010 cuts from Westminster, a Brexit vote that went the wrong way and a nasty article in the Spectator under Boris Johnson’s watch and a seemingly irresistible case was made for a city destined to walk alone.

Haygarth’s article concludes – “The phrase 'Scouse, not English' not only encapsulates Liverpool's civic pride and a healthy rebellious spirit, but expresses a feeling that the city has been so often let down by the establishment of this country. It should come as no shock that large swathes of this Labour-voting, outward-looking, and heavily-Irish city do not feel like they have much in common with the rest of England.”

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“They also both spoke to something else – a powerful sense of grievance baked into the city identity… a mutual connection made through the collective swallowing of bitter pills… our loudest voices complicit in the forging of our own myth of alienation.”

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For me, the sense of our loudest voices being complicit in the forging of our own myth of alienation is palpable and the justifications horribly deterministic. Who here thinks their life choices and personality are determined by people born 200 years ago? Stitching together disparate events, our public figures and opinion-formers are consciously weaving a narrative that seems to share some of the features of an accelerated national story – one encompassing communal loss and betrayal, a unique sense of difference forged through a mythic connection to lands beyond the horizon and an othering from a surrounding horde of distinctly unsympathetic barbarians. But as foundation stories go, it seems to lack many of the positive elements that make nationhood worth having – with little sense of victories past or historic purpose hard won. Today, it’s hard to look back to our past days as the Second City of Empire with any pride – our fine buildings now come tinged with a dusting of racial guilt. Meanwhile, victories in the class war seem thin on the ground. We are adrift.

What is striking about this evolving story of self, and I must point out that this is about the narrative, not the individual, what is most striking is that it does seem to cohere around a strong sense of grievance for slights endured – a mutual connection made through the collective swallowing of bitter pills made palatable by the odd-football win. Of course, many will simply feel this description does not fit and may take offence at any perceived slight on their scouse identity. But this project to manufacture a sense of separation is very real.

In my view, we are being sold a pup and it’s one that needs to take a trip back to the vet. While we gripe against lazy stereotypes in the media, we are, in truth, guilty of playing to them ourselves and too often take on these restrictive ideas as our own. Liverpool, and I say this with genuine love, is in danger of becoming an addict to its own class-A narrative.

Stuck in the past – where’s our sense of agency?

I’m conscious I need to explain how I think this works and why I believe it’s so dangerous to our health of mind and our future prospects. Let’s go back to that Liverpool Echo article and the popular argument. It has the benefit of simplicity. It goes like this… our sense of grievance, which is legitimately founded, is fuelling our independent, republican spirit, our demand for fairness and our rejection of Englishness, and this is entirely understandable and in some ways positive. It is up to the English and the English alone to make good or we’ll carry on our separate way. Should you be so minded you can buy the mug or the t-shirt and proudly proclaim your support for the Scouse Republic.

Now let me explain what I think is really happening. It ain’t pretty. Strap yourself in. I won’t be winning any prizes for popularity.

My argument is that our sense of grievance is fuelling not a positive assertion of independence but a downward spiral into insularity. The modern sense of political scouse identity that we are being encouraged to adopt, is a perversion of the positive and energetic forms that went before. It is forming primarily around negative assumptions – everyone hates us, we never get treated fairly, we have to fight for everything, and the outcomes that we want are largely beyond our control. There is a sense that the game is rigged against us, feeding a loss of faith in government authority both in Westminster but also increasingly at the local government level too. That’s one of the reasons why we’ve been seeing such low electoral turnouts. After all, if you view things that way, what is the point?

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“Our sense of grievance is fuelling not a positive assertion of independence but a downward spiral into insularity. The modern sense of political scouse identity that we are being encouraged to adopt, is a perversion of the positive and energetic forms that went before.”

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A primary feature of this outlook is pessimism and a loss of faith in the future. Our belief in our own agency to identify and solve the city’s problems and to conceive of big, ambitious solutions is becoming eroded over time. This is why today, in Liverpool of all places, we feel the pull of the past so strongly, expressed as it is in our stubborn defence of heritage (even when it makes no sense) or our determination to keep fighting old battles long after the social forces that made them have ceased to apply. Looking to the past is simply more reassuring because there is already a map to guide us and our obsession with the 1980s is at least in part, down to this nervousness about our future. It is also a politically convenient way of passing the buck.

As we struggle to find solutions to the problems we face and lose hope of better outcomes, our instinct as proud men and women of Liverpool is to throw our ire outwards, to say, ‘Sod you’ to the rest of England, which as the mooted source of our suffering is cast as the villain (the Scots, Welsh and Irish have our sympathies as they are also considered to be under ‘the yolk’). So then we double down on our own sense of uniqueness - we are hated because we are different - which is mostly a palatable rationalisation of our own sense of defeat. Of course, some people just go away, fire up their belly, and take charge of their lives, for example by setting up a business in places like the Baltic. Others just go away. Meanwhile, as a community, we re-commit to our grievances.

Unfortunately, despite the likelihood of a new government and a change in policy direction, there is little prospect of a shining knight riding over the hill to rescue us. We know this, don’t we? Our grievances serve no purpose in a battle we cannot win. All they do is fuel our sense of powerlessness. What we need to do as a city, as a people and as individuals is to reclaim our sense of power and agency and we can only do that by just doing it. Some, like Metro Mayor Steve Rotherham, will argue that this is why he is trying to gain more powers for the Combined Authority so that the region can exercise more control over decisions and that is right. But unless our leaders can find a way to turn their backs on the dominant pessimism of these times, they will dream only little dreams.  

What ‘Scouse, not English’ and the backward-looking forever-focus on the 1980s offer us is a shrunken vision of our place in the world. A tiny Scouse Republic of Retreat - a new Pimlico. Sure, it doesn’t require a passport for entry and exit, but just like in that famous Ealing Comedy, it brings with it a wariness of the outside and a closing of doors at the exact time we need to be opening them. We should have no truck for this limited and carefully edited version of ourselves, this ‘Petty Scouser’ mentality. Instead, let’s stand tall, be open to the world and claim our confident place amongst it.

So, back to Thatcher and Toxteth

A little section here about our 1980s obsession and who stands to benefit. Let’s be clear. When in 2022 people re-raise folk devils from 40+ years ago as if they are still relevant, they are doing it for a reason. In Liverpool, it gives activists and elected representatives an alibi, allowing them to point the finger of blame outwards for the city’s sorrows, instead of looking within. It’s a way of avoiding scrutiny and of taking responsibility for inventing new stories and new sources of power and success. It’s time we all got wise to it. We deserve better.

Folk-Devil: In Liverpool, Margaret Thatcher was seen as a real-life Voldemort (Photo: Paul Marriott /Alamy)

More concerning though is what an over-zealous focus on the past communicates to the world outside and to the people we’d like to partner with. Forever talking about the 1980s pins us as irrelevant, backward-looking, and worst of all, passive in the face of the present. By using long-gone events to explain the outcomes of today, we risk turning ourselves into victims of history, still driven by events we cannot change. Time to let go.

What’s in a name?

At Liverpolitan, we’ve often been chided for adopting such a name. Why didn’t we use Liverpudlian? Nobody calls themselves a Liverpolitan. But exercising our agency means waving goodbye to insularity and engaging fully with the world around us. It is our signal that this country and in fact the whole planet is full of Liverpolitans making their way beyond the narrow confines of the city limits. What is remarkable about many of these people, is that though their lives have taken them elsewhere, they retain their passion for their ultimate home. They are a resource, they are legion and they are on our side. We should use them.

Last words to Joanne…

So what did the Mayor say that was so interesting? If we are being honest, it is the Left in the city that has been more prone to mining the past. You can argue it’s been an election-winning strategy, but that doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. So when the Labour Mayor of Liverpool tells us it’s time to face forward, I think we should listen. Here’s what she had to say.

“Every city has its challenges, and Liverpool is no different. But outdated scouse stereotypes and harking back to the 1980s does not define our city today. It is blatantly obvious that the city has undergone massive transformation and is continuously evolving. We have a dynamic culture and arts scene and major regeneration projects, whether it’s the growing health and life sciences sector, the film studios on Edge Lane, or Bramley Moore Dock. It is damaging when publications rely on the same old tired cliches and narratives about Liverpool, as it just perpetuates old myths that simply are not true. Liverpool is looking forward with optimism – maybe it’s time others do too.” Joanne Anderson, Mayor of Liverpool.

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Paul Bryan is the Editor and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a freelance content writer, script editor, communications strategist and creative coach

*Main picture by Alex McCarthy on Unsplash

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Liverpool Party Flats: The Case for Better Regulation

Councillor Nick Small

The sharing economy has many benefits for consumers. Digital platforms like Uber, Deliveroo and Airbnb are disrupting many industries such as taxis, takeaway food and hotels.

Over the last few years, Liverpool, as the UK’s fifth most visited city, has seen a massive increase in Airbnb-style, short-term lets. This is good news for many. People can make some extra money with few barriers to entry by renting out rooms. The latest Airbnb UK Insights Report states that a typical UK host on their platform earns £3,100 a year. Meanwhile, visitors get more choice and flexibility about where they can stay and how much they pay with 78% of guests claiming they choose to travel on Airbnb so they can “live like a local”. Sharing platforms enhance our tourism capacity supplying temporary demand for accommodation more flexibly around big events and there’s emerging evidence post-pandemic that some visitors prefer sharing homes because they consider them safer than other forms of accommodation such as hotels and hostels where there is a higher chance of interaction.

The sharing economy offers new opportunities for economic growth. The average guest travelling with Airbnb spends £100 per day in the UK and 43% of this is spent in the neighbourhoods in which they stay which undoubtedly creates new jobs. The sharing economy is environmentally-sustainable too. When finite resources are shared, fewer resources are wasted. Consumption is reduced.

But there are downsides. The pace of change means that, as with other parts of the sharing economy, analogue regulation built for another age is struggling to keep pace with the structure of the digital economy. New challenges have emerged around workers’ rights, while the enforcement of traditional consumer protections has become more difficult in markets where services are increasingly delivered online.  For example, who does the consumer take legal action against if the service isn’t provided as promised? Is it the host or the platform? Who exactly is providing the service? Meanwhile, in another area of concern, our tax bases are being eroded by new digital platforms where value is often offshored.

We’re also seeing other issues. Longstanding residents are experiencing problems with anti-social behaviour, noise and general disturbance from short-term lets, and there can be environmental issues too, especially with waste collection with bins being left out on non-collection days. In some cases, short-term lets are being used anonymously for criminal activities. What we are finding is that as the number of short-term lets grows and becomes concentrated in an area, the bigger the problem often is for residents.

There are four main problems we’re seeing in Liverpool.

Firstly, there’s a lack of data available for councils and other public agencies, like the fire service and police, about exactly where short-term lets are located. Some platforms do share information but it’s on a very high level. This means it can be difficult to enforce existing laws and regulations around environmental health, nuisance and fire safety. Criminal activities can be very hard to detect and police.

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‘Longstanding residents are experiencing problems with anti-social behaviour, noise and general disturbance from short-term lets.’

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Secondly, there’s a lack of awareness of existing regulation amongst operators. Many people renting out their homes as short-term lets can find themselves unwittingly falling foul of mortgage agreements, tenancy agreements banning subletting or restrictive covenants. Sometimes this can have major negative implications for homeowners, such as banks withdrawing fixed-term mortgage deals.

Thirdly, councils are seeing their tax base changing as the distinction between homes and hotels becomes more blurred. Owners of short-term lets may often legitimately still pay council tax rather than businesses rates. Council tax is generally at a lower rate than business rates, so councils lose out. Student homes are exempt from council tax (and business rates), but there’s some anecdotal local evidence that rooms in purpose-built student accommodation are being rented out on sharing platforms with no local tax being paid. Of course, this goes beyond people not declaring their financial activities; it’s as much about the structure of the tax system. In most incidences, short-term lets qualifying for Business Rates or even tax relief is perfectly legal, but is it right? Cities like Liverpool, with a weak tax base to start with, are particularly exposed when homes are converted into short-term lets with implications for frontline public services. Since 2010, councils have seen central government support grants dwindle away and the proceeds of business rate growth retained locally, but if business rates end up coming at the expense of Council Tax revenues, it just adds to the pressures on public sector budgets.

Finally, there’s often a negative impact on local housing markets with family homes being taken out of the traditional housing supply and people being denied access to affordable housing. When rental yields for short-term lets exceed yields for tenancies, as they do in Liverpool, communities suffer as homes get bought up by speculative investors and local people, especially young people, get priced out of local housing.

We are seeing all four of these downsides in Liverpool. It is especially noticeable in the city centre, in Anfield and in the Smithdown and Sefton Park areas, but these negative effects are being felt in other communities across the city too.

That’s why I tabled a motion along with five other councillors  - Christine Banks, Laura Robertson-Collins, James Roberts, Lena Simic and Billy Marratt -  to Liverpool City Council’s Strategic Development and Housing Select Committee calling for the introduction of a register of tourist accommodation providers. We welcome the ongoing public consultation launched by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport into this matter examining, as it is, how other places around the world are addressing these important issues.

Scotland is well ahead of England on this. The Scottish Government set up an expert panel on the sharing economy in 2017. It included representatives from sharing economy platforms like Airbnb. As a result, the Scottish Government brought in the Licensing Order and Control Area Amendment Regulations in March of this year which will introduce a licensing scheme for short-term lets; existing hosts will have until 1 April 2023 to apply. This means Scottish councils will know what’s happening in their area, house by house, street by street, so they’ll be able to prioritise resources and tackle problems more effectively.

The new regulations allow Scottish councils to declare control areas, where owners will need a specific change of use planning permission to convert a dwelling into a short-term let. Edinburgh City Council became the first council in Scotland to use these new powers. There are already similar planning powers in England, but only in London and only covering certain types of short-term lets. In London, owners need planning permission if they are renting out their home for more than 90 days a year. Responsible platforms like Airbnb enforce this; others do not. Elsewhere in England, there is no such requirement.

The Welsh Government announced proposals for additional regulatory and tax measures against short-term lets in July. A new mandatory licensing scheme is planned. Councils will be able to require homeowners to change the status of their dwellings from primary homes into second homes or short-term holiday accommodation. They’ll also be able to charge additional council tax on second homes and holiday lets.

In Northern Ireland, they’ve had a tourist accommodation certificate scheme, which covers sharing platforms, in place since 1992. It is an offence to offer tourist accommodation without a certificate and is punishable by a £2,500 fine or six months imprisonment.

Outside the UK, other places are doing even more.

In Portugal, there’s a national registration scheme for all tourist accommodation and councils can introduce containment areas limiting the number of short-term lets. Meanwhile, starting last month, the city of Barcelona has banned outright the short-term let of private rooms, though not whole houses or apartments, which are still acceptable providing owners have a licence.

It goes on. The Netherlands has a national registration scheme that local councils can opt into. Ireland has designated some areas as Rent Pressure Zones, where hosts can only rent out rooms after being licensed to do so. New York City requires sharing platforms to share data on hosts with the city authorities. Boston only allows short-term lets in homes where hosts are present and San Francisco bans short-term lets in second homes entirely. Both have local registration schemes. In Japan, there’s been a licensing regime in place since 2018. If the host doesn’t live onsite, they must have a designated administrator to be responsible. A short-term let can only be operated for 180 days a year and waste has to be collected as trade waste, rather than domestic waste.

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‘Our tax bases are being eroded by new digital platforms where value is often offshored. Cities like Liverpool, with a weak tax base to start with, are particularly exposed when homes are converted into short-term lets with implications for frontline public services.’

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So what interventions are we calling for in Liverpool?

First, we want to recognise good practice. There are a lot of great hosts in Liverpool causing few, if any, problems for neighbours. I live in the city centre and have had an Airbnb host as a neighbour for several years. I’ve never encountered any issues. The council is starting to work more closely with responsible hosts in the same way that it works with the Private Landlords’ Forum and that is exactly as it should be. There’s a lot that everyone can learn from each other through better dialogue. Responsible hosts should have a voice on groups like the Liverpool City Region Visitor Economy Board.

Secondly, we need new powers on planning. Permission for a change of use to a short-term let must be introduced and, as a minimum, the 90-day requirement in London should be extended to the rest of England. This would allow councils to assess each and every application on its individual merits, taking into account the amenity value for neighbours and whether the area is primarily residential or mixed use. We could then put conditions in place as appropriate including operational management plans which look at how a short-term let is managed. If we get this right, it will stop communities becoming blighted by an over-concentration of short-term lets.

Thirdly, there should be a national tourist accommodation registration scheme, delivered locally by councils. I see Liverpool’s landlord licensing scheme as being a roaring success, as it’s given the council extra financial resources as well as the data to enforce health and safety, consumer protection and other regulations much more effectively. It means there’s no race to the bottom. Responsible operators are rewarded, dodgy operators are targeted for enforcement and problems for neighbours are reduced. Most importantly, it will give councils better data to respond to change in a strategic way, giving communities more power to shape the future of their neighbourhoods.

Finally, there needs to be changes in how short-terms lets are taxed. They should be treated as businesses, subject to business rates and not council tax. Waste generated by short-term lets should not be collected by councils at the same price as those paid by permanent residents. It should be more expensive.

The Department of Culture, Media and Sport consultation is open until 21 September. As a result of our motion, Liverpool City Council will be submitting evidence into that process. We’ll be supporting the proposal that councils be given the strongest possible powers to make the sharing economy work better for everyone. I hope that the new Government will respond positively to that suggestion.

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Nick Small is the Labour and Co-operative Councillor for the Central Liverpool ward and has been in elected office since 2004. He is currently part of a 6-member group campaigning for stronger regulation of the short-term let market within the city.  Nick tweets @cllrnicksmall.

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The Quest For Utopia

Pauline Hadaway

When Eric Hobsbawn, one of the foremost historians of the twentieth century, was invited to address the World Political Forum in 2005, almost fifteen years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, he used his speech to express admiration for Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, and architect of perestroika, who died last week, aged 91. Extolling the almost bloodless transition from communism to post-communism in Eastern Europe, while lamenting the social, economic and cultural catastrophe that followed, Hobsbawn proclaimed that the world had witnessed ‘the last of the utopian projects, so characteristic of the last century’.  Perhaps surprisingly, ‘the last of the utopian projects’ was not an allusion to Soviet communism, but rather to the epic triumph of Western capitalism and the associated belief that liberal democracy now represented the final, ideal mode of government.  Addressing the Forum - with its audience of political, business and cultural leaders and its impeccably utopian mission ‘to solve the crucial problems that affect humankind today’ - Hobsbawn, a lifelong Marxist, declared that it was the visions of liberal, not socialist utopias that now epitomised the triumph of hope over historical realism.

Two years ago, The Liverpool Salon discussed the economic future of the North, in the light of recently made election promises to level up forgotten towns and regions, where growth had lagged behind the prosperous Southeast. In the middle of Britain’s first national lockdown, the future looked grim, yet barely 12 weeks earlier, UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak had pledged some £640 billion capital investment in roads, railways, schools, hospitals and power networks, promising that ‘no region will be left behind’. After decades promoting the values of individual responsibility, the benefits of privatisation and the evil of state handouts, was a Tory government prepared to rip up its fiscal rule book to lay the ground for a new Jerusalem in Labour’s old northern heartlands? Similarly, Manchester’s metro mayor, Andy Burnham, warned there would be no return to ‘business as usual’, now that the pandemic had exposed the gaps in social care systems and the weaknesses of the gig economy. Appealing for consensus and cooperation, Burnham called on civic leaders to get behind his strategy to ‘build back better’, based on valuing the dignity of labour and fostering mutual dependency and community support. Having grown great cities of culture from the dung of deindustrialisation, were Britain’s metro mayors ditching their enthusiasm for trickle-down economics and dreaming of a return to grass-roots socialism? The world transformed by an unlooked-for natural event is an archetypal theme in utopian – and dystopian – fiction. Were these grandiose visions of transformation to new and better ways of living, a genuine map to the future or nothing more than flights of fancy, designed to distract us all from the deepening political crisis?

Of all the grandiose political projects that emerged from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Marxism, the ideological foundation of Soviet communism, made the most audacious claims – not least of which was the belief in its own historical necessity as part of the onward drive of human progress. However, communism’s grand promises of peace and freedom rang hollow during the period of Soviet communism,  which saw the creation of some of the world's most militarized and ruthless police states. The murderous tyranny of Stalin’s Great Purge saw the execution of at least 750,000 people deemed ‘enemies of the state’ with many more sent to the Siberian Gulags. After Stalin, the remaining power and authority of the Soviet system rested on its promise to harness the forces of industrial modernity to banish scarcity and ensure economic security and well-being for all. Though hard to imagine from today’s perspective, the Cold War was as much a competition over the best way to organise the future of humanity, as it was a race to build more nuclear missiles and tanks. The question of which system – capitalism or communism – offered the best means of meeting human needs was central. Looking back, the whole Cold War period abounds in paradox. At its height, and in the midst of a terrifying escalation of the arms race which threatened global nuclear annihilation, and with brutal proxy wars raging in Africa and South East Asia, populations from both sides of the Iron Curtain still maintained their belief in the possibility of peaceful international cooperation. Importantly, both sides still believed in the certainty of future material progress. At a time of rising expectations, as the world tried to put the devastation and depravities of WW2 behind it, the ideological resentments that had frozen East-West relations were simultaneously fuelling intense competition over the rival systems’ capacity to deliver cultural, educational and medical advances and to expand the bounds of knowledge and scientific exploration for – both claimed - the benefit of all mankind.

The struggle between competing visions of the future took a somewhat bizarre turn in 1959 at the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow’s Sokolniki Park, designed to display the very best in American life to a curious Russian public – in cars, homes, fashion, art,  and - that great icon of American modernity - Pepsi Cola. Against the surreal backdrop of an American model kitchen display, a heated argument erupted between US vice-president Richard Nixon and Soviet First Secretary, Nikita Khrushchev. Nixon boasted that capitalism had provided American steel workers with affordable homes, dish-washers and colour TVs, provoking first-secretary Nikita Khrushchev’s angry riposte:

“Is that what America is capable of, and how long has she existed? 300 years? 150 years of independence and this is her level. We haven't quite reached 42 years, and in another 7 years, we'll be at the level of America, and after that we'll go farther.”

In the shadow of a model kitchen display, US Vice-President, Richard Nixon and USSR Premier, Nikita Khrushchev debated their competing visions of the future before reporters and onlookers at the American National Exhibition (1959). Their impromptu exchange became known as the Kitchen Debate.

The fact that the Soviets were willing to host such an event might be seen as a testament to their own cultural confidence at the time.  Thirty years on from the kitchen debate, the USSR had dissolved into chaos, consigned to the dustbin of history, along with its own futuristic visions of space colonization, flying cars, jet-packs and miracle kitchens for all. Good riddance, declared hard-headed economic realists and monetarists like Milton Friedman and Margaret Thatcher, while promptly proclaiming the triumph of their own vision of property ownership and purchasing power as the pinnacle of human happiness and freedom.

This ‘Last Utopia’ was thus conceived as the old one heaved its last, its future guaranteed within a harmonious framework of global institutions and markets, to which there could be no alternative.

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‘The impulse to imagine new lands of plenty or to yearn for a vanished golden age is as old as human civilisation. After all, what do the ancient myths of the lost island of Atlantis or of Moses leading his people to the Promised Land constitute but a sense of a better way of doing things always just beyond reach.’

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After the shock and pain, first, of the 1970s oil crisis, then of de-industrialisation, the triumph of the free market ushered in an era of abundance, as capital flowed to low-cost destinations, profits soared and cheaper imports drove up standards of living.  Falling prices and easy credit brought foreign holidays, electronic goods, luxury cars and miracle kitchens within reach of millions in western democracies and eventually to citizens in the old communist bloc and across the developing world.  The 1990s saw the return of large-scale public spending in Britain, investment in schools and hospitals and the beautification of grim post-industrial cities, like Glasgow, Manchester and Newcastle. The expansion of the cultural economy stimulated new industrial activity based on media and communications, tourism, leisure and design.  From near-costless telephone calls to online streaming and advanced communication, the giveaway economy of the turn of the century even engendered – albeit briefly - a freewheeling idealism and revolutionary optimism redolent of the 1960s. The global financial crisis of 2008 revealed that the networks of markets and global supply chains holding up this brave new world were little more than a great house of cards.

Thirty years on from the end of the Cold War,  we appear to be waving a fond farewell to the promised era of abundance, and witnessing history’s rapid return.  As world leaders rub their eyes and adjust to the changed reality, it is still unclear what kind of future will finally emerge from the ruins of the old system. We seem to be approaching a new day of reckoning, when promises of peace and prosperity secured within a harmonious commonwealth of markets may prove as illusory as earlier promises of peace and freedom, begging the question: can a perfect world ever be realised?

Speculation on the ideal state goes back at least to Plato’s account of a perfectly ordered Republic ruled by philosopher-kings, while the impulse to imagine new lands of plenty or to yearn for a vanished golden age is as old as human civilisation. After all, what do the ancient myths of the lost island of Atlantis or of Moses leading his people to the Promised Land constitute but a sense of a better way of doing things always just beyond reach. However, the term utopia, only dates to the beginning of the early modern period, with Thomas More’s 1516 fictional account of the discovery of the island of Utopia, an ideal commonwealth, situated somewhere in the new world, likely southeast of Brazil. Apart from naming a whole genre of political writing and thinking, More’s Utopia brought the speculative premise of building a more perfect order closer to reality. One of the ways of making Utopia seem credible was the adoption of a prevalent form of story-telling: the returning traveller who gives an eyewitness account of a curious distant land that seems both similar, and yet more attractive, pleasing and sensibly ordered than his own.

Taking the voyages of real-life Florentine explorer, Amerigo Vespucci as its model, More’s Utopia purported to be a literal rather than allegorical account. The supposed truth of Utopia’s perfections comes with a caveat from the author that fantasies of human perfection inevitably fall apart in the encounter with reality.  While More, ever the sceptical narrator, frequently pokes fun at the absurdities of the Utopian system, the credibility of the  tale he recounts is undermined by the name he gives to his traveller: Hythloday, Greek for ‘talker of nonsense’. Indeed, the first utopia effectively demolishes the whole utopian premise. More coined the word from the Greek ou-topos meaning 'no place' or 'nowhere', with a nod to the almost identical Greek word eu-topos which means a ‘good place’. In other words, the ideal place that does not exist.

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‘The idealisation of a centrally organized international order, dominated by great powers, governed by a professional administration, consulting with teams of academics, lawyers, diplomats, philosophers, doctors and entrepreneurs, while keeping the masses at arms-length from political decision-making, only goes to show that one man or woman’s dream of utopia is another’s idea of hell on earth.’

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One of the most striking of Utopia’s many excellent perfections arises from the absence of private property and the abolition of money, where all things are held in ‘common to every man’. A century later, a very different vision of perfection was created in the highly technocratic Bensalemite nation depicted within Francis Bacon’s novel, New Atlantis. For the rulers of Bensalem, perfection lay in an endless expansion of knowledge and power over nature to enlarge ‘the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible.’ The imaginary government, economy, laws, practices of war, customs and religions of More’s humanist and Bacon’s scientific utopias recognisably prefigure numerous social and economic experiments that have followed in Britain, Europe and the United States. Published 150 years after Utopia, James Harrington’s, The Commonwealth of Oceana was both an exposition of an ideal constitution and a practical guide for the government of England’s new Cromwellian republic. Those who chose to abandon England for a better life in the American colonies often did so in pursuit of their own dreams of utopia, like the seventeenth-century Puritans with their ‘city on a hill’ in Massachusetts Bay.

Having taken concrete form in the English, American and French revolutions, utopian ideals of liberty, equality, the pursuit of happiness and a more harmonious order have become deeply embedded in the political psyches of men and women in the modern world. The nineteenth-century was a particularly fertile time for social experimentation, with the utopian socialism of Charles Fourier and Robert Owen inspiring attempts to establish ideal communities in Europe and the US. Enlightened industrialists built their own ideal company towns, like Saltaire in Bradford, Merseyside's Port Sunlight and Pullman in Chicago, designed to showcase the potential beauty and order of life under industrialism capitalism.

Utopia in space. In 1975, after a study into future space colonies, Nasa commissioned a series of illustrations to imagine what they might look like. Technology and nature sat side-by-side in this doughnut-shaped structure. Rick Guidice / NASA Ames Research Center

Characteristically sceptical of utopianism, the liberals and neoliberals were latecomers to the quest for utopia.  W.E. Gladstone, the first great leader of the Liberal party, proclaimed that he would not be diverted from the task of ‘effecting great good for the people of England’ by speculating on ‘what might possibly be attained in Utopia’. By the end of the nineteenth century those sections of Liberal thought critical of the ‘false phantoms’ of imperial glory - the little Englanders and the Manchester Liberals, like Cobden and Bright - had given way to the proponents of global expansion, which saw Britain as a force for good in the world. After the horrors of the Great War, Liberal utopians contemplated a future world state, set up and led by an enlightened committee of wise and tolerant rulers, rather like the ‘voluntary nobility’ imagined by H.G. Wells in the novel, A Modern Utopia.  The idealisation of a centrally organized international order, dominated by great powers, governed by a professional administration, consulting with teams of academics, lawyers, diplomats, philosophers, doctors and entrepreneurs, while keeping the masses at arms-length from political decision-making, only goes to show that one man or woman’s dream of utopia is another’s idea of hell on earth. Oscar Wilde wrote that ‘a map of the world that does not include Utopia is not even worth glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which humanity is always landing’. When humanity lands, he went on to say, ‘it looks out, and, seeing a better country, sets sail’. While many of the problems and imagined solutions that excited early utopian thinkers continue to perplex us, our enthusiasm for setting sail in search of new worlds has – not surprisingly – faded.

Oscar Wilde rightly observed that the realisation of utopia lies in material progress. Today, however, we seem more inclined to expect the worse, than hope for better times.  In another paradox, the triumph of capitalist democracy appears to have deepened the level of hostility towards the historical benefits it has achieved. Mass consumption is reviled as crass consumerism, manufacturing and scientific progress seen as destroyers of the planet, while popular democracy is recast as dangerous populism. Believing that history has taught us that the road to dystopias of disorder and tyranny are paved with dreams of perfection, Faustian dystopias haunt our dreams of building a better world. For new generations setting out on their own quest for utopia - at the end of the end of history - the fundamental question is not so much the possibility, but the desirability of realising a perfect world.

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Pauline Hadaway is a writer, researcher and co-founder of The Liverpool Salon, which has been hosting public discussions around philosophical, political and cultural topics on Merseyside for over seven years.

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The Scourge of Northwesternism

Michael McDonough and Paul Bryan

Does anyone else notice that simmering sense of defeatism running through pretty much everything Liverpool does today? Whether it’s politics, culture or architecture there seems to be a crushing sense of meekness dragging down or at the very least blowing off course the city’s regeneration. You don’t have to look too far to find the evidence, from Liverpool’s proposed new stumpy, tall buildings policy, to the attempts to rejuvenate the high street with low-class tat like bingo and go-karts. Even our waterfront indoor arena was built patently too small to compete for the best music acts. We seem to have gotten good at hiding ourselves under a rock. 

I noticed this sense of defeatism running through what was otherwise a riveting read by Jon Egan in his recent Liverpolitan article, ‘It’s Time to Get Interesting’. Examining Liverpool’s fallen place in the world, he searched for a solution and built it on the stoniest ground. Believing that “Liverpool’s claims to regional dominance is a boat that has long since sailed”, he called it an “unavoidable truth” that Manchester is now established as the region’s capital. Then from that premise he pitched an idea - unable to escape our fate as the North West’s second fiddle, we should lower our goals and find a workaround based on our outsider status and our sense of difference. He suggested we do this, by making ourselves ‘interesting’, something that comes naturally to us because it’s kind of in our social DNA. Austin, Texas was held up as a possible model to follow, a city which carves out its place in the world under the banner, ‘Keep Austin Weird’.

Now, I know that Jon doesn’t intend to cast Liverpool as a dancing monkey at a freak show, and you could argue that the economic data points to the truth of our cities relative position, but I don’t really see this strategy solving the myriad economic and social problems that Liverpool faces. It doesn’t sound all that far removed from the innovation strategies that have largely failed to deliver innovation. But my biggest problem with it is that it’s premised on pessimism. For me the race to become interesting or to live into our sense of cultural difference is just a way of rationalising our lowered position.

For me this all smacks of a cancerous rot eating away at Liverpool’s self-esteem. A long gestating idea that Liverpool cannot and will not ever again be more than an offshoot of the aspirations of another relatively small, regional UK city. Who the hell wants that? It’s a view that forces us to lower our horizons and settle for less and it has only one direction of travel - from city to village in countless, tiny steps.

Manchester at night. Just down the road things looked a little different. Chris Chambers / Alamy

I’m sad to say I increasingly see evidence of this sense of cultural pessimism all around me. They say, make no small plans, but we’re becoming experts at it, and you’ll find a whole breed of shamanistic professionals, activists or NIMBYs throwing shade on the very idea of planning big, going tall, and growing our economy. Sometimes they even reject the very concept of competing. This low growth rationalisation of defeat is usually wrapped in warm fuzzy words like sustainability or human-centred development, while a more optimistic view is seen as foolishly utopian or an apologetic for predatory capitalism. Yet just a few miles down the road things look quite different. And for those who want more, it’s often easier to just pack their bags and relocate.

Too much of our professional class appears to have succumbed to the Liverpool-killing long game of ‘regionalism’ - the modern face of managed decline. You can hear it in the language, and see it in the initiatives. It’s almost as if a subconscious decision-making 'culture' has pushed Liverpool to the periphery. Seeing yourself as secondary or even tertiary is now so ingrained that Liverpool no longer feels it can compete with what is merely another UK provincial city. So instead we see attempts to 'partner', 'work with’ and ‘align with’ Manchester-based institutions, which feels more and more like surrender rather than balanced cooperation.

Of course, ego won’t let us admit this and any self-respecting scouser will bristle at the very idea of Manchester as the regional capital; dark insecurities soothed by talk of world-class this and world-class that. Perhaps if we host Eurovision we’ll feel relevant again? But it doesn’t mean this humbling process isn’t happening or hasn’t already happened right under our noses. It’s all part of the perpetual grind of what I call ‘Northwesternism’. It’s part policy and part psychology – the forces of economic agglomeration, and political influence colliding with the endless boosterism of a perpetually on the front-foot city, culturally pump-primed by a media only too willing to play along. Drip, drip, drip bleed the jobs and opportunities; young lives transfused away. On the Liverpool side, we put the blinkers on, our taxi drivers famed for telling all and sundry ‘things are getting better’. Do they still say that? Over time, our inferiority complex becomes so ingrained that when the subject of the problematic Liverpool-Manchester relationship is brought up it’s laughed at or sneered at, dismissed as some kind of conspiracy theory. But then you just have to look at our graduate retention numbers. Deep down we just know.

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“The idea that our two cities, separated by a mere 32.9 miles are not in competition with each other is a supreme act of gaslighting.”

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Anthony Murphy of the University of Liverpool Management School recently posted on Twitter that “Smart young people from the city see it that way - flocking there for decent, well-paid jobs”. He wasn’t talking about Liverpool. Sometimes, being the capital is a state of mind. They have it, we don’t and they have the jobs too.

Our subconscious defeatism makes us smaller, lesser and this shows across so many sectors. We've almost got Stockholm Syndrome. I believe that Liverpool's malaise and rudderless direction have been a wonderful gift to Manchester's leaders creating a workforce that only ever travels east in the morning.

‘Northwesternism’, the passive acceptance that Manchester is the region’s dominant Silverback, is for me Liverpool’s greatest challenge in re-asserting itself as a major city. Our leaders should go into every regional partnership meeting with their eyes open, asking themselves ‘what’s in it for us?’ In Jon Egan’s article, he discussed how ‘Manchester is definitively and inexorably set on its own northern trajectory’. That being the case, why on earth does our Metro Mayor Steve Rotherham continue to insist on working so closely with Manchester’s Mayor, Andy Burnham? They have their own trajectory and set of goals, and they are not the same as ours. Increasingly, it feels to me as though Andy Burnham is entertaining one of the Greater Manchester boroughs – once Liverpool, now Manchester-on-Sea.

Do a little research and you’ll discover Mr Rotheram more often than not is stood behind Andy Burnham in public images and media features. Burnham is always positioned at the centre. There are no calls for Rotherham to be christened the ‘King of the North’; no bets placed on Steve Rotherham to be a future Prime Minister, and certainly no column in the London Evening Standard. You could ask why any of this matters, but in an era of image and soft power projection, Liverpool is suspiciously absent from the national conversation, a recommended city break in the Telegraph, but fringe where it counts. 

Until Liverpool rejects ‘Northwesternism’ and the slow but steady spread of Manchester’s well-oiled and expanding ‘psychogeography’, then Liverpool cannot confidently look outward to the rest of the world as it will be forever undermined on its own doorstep.

I think we have to wake up and fast. And now Levelling Up Secretary, Greg Clarke, has just invited Sir Howard Bernstein, Manchester City Council’s former Chief Executive to help draw up a vision for our city’s future, something our own council has singularly failed to do themselves. He’ll be joined by Judith Blake, former Leader of Leeds Council, Steve Rotheram and an as yet unnamed person from the business sector. Excellent administrators though they are, I can’t help wondering if Howard and Judith will have Liverpool’s best interests at heart. Maybe they will. We can hope for the best. Would Bernstein propose anything that might weaken Manchester’s grip given he spent his whole career building their success? Would he want to champion our promising games industry or eye it as yet another prospect to wine and dine? Would Judith support a significant expansion of our legal sector given Leed’s strengths in that area? At the very least, we need to stay awake to our own interests at all times and turn a deaf ear to those who say competing is for chumps – that Liverpool can exist in its own utopian bubble where the lion lays down with the lamb.

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“This low growth rationalisation of defeat is usually wrapped in warm fuzzy words like sustainability or human-centred development, while a more optimistic view is seen as foolishly utopian or an apologetic for predatory capitalism.”

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MANCHESTER nakedly pursues its own interests. There’s nothing wrong with that – I’m not passing moral judgement but the idea that our two cities, separated by a mere 32.9 miles are not in competition with each other is a supreme act of gaslighting. The fact that so many members of Liverpool’s political and business communities have fallen for it, like hostages besotted with their kidnappers, is evidence of either a stunning lack of self-awareness or a cynical judgement on moving as the wind blows, taking advantage of a new reality while tucking the loser in bed and whispering in their ear that everything will be alright.

The decision in 1997 to approve Manchester Airport’s second runway over expansion at Liverpool was not in our interests. It was in theirs. The building of Media City in 2007 with its gravitational pull on all TV production led to the closing of our own Granada TV Studio at Albert Dock. It was not in our interests. It was in theirs. The conscious derailment by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority in 2012 of the Atlantic Gateway strategy which would have seen multi-billion pound investments along the Ship Canal land corridor including at Liverpool and Wirral Waters was torpedoed in favour of a focus on city regions and what became the Northern Powerhouse with the cheques signed off in George Osbourne’s Tatton constituency. It sank the prospect of region-wide regeneration in favour of the city to the east. It was not in our interests. It was in theirs. The decision to build two gold-plated HS2 stations in Manchester and Manchester Airport (and none in Liverpool), given the nod in 2013, meant an unnecessary dog-leg and longer commutes between the cities. It was not in our interests. It was in theirs. Not that Joe Anderson would have noticed. He was like a blind man in a room full of alligators. Food for the predators. But the piece de resistance dates back to 2001 and the signing of the hard to believe Manchester-Liverpool Joint Concordat Agreement by the leaders of the two cities under the watchful eyes of the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott and the supposedly neutral North West Development Agency. Inspired by a Salford University academic, the agreement proposed to end our ancient enmity once and for all. As noted in the Independent, the Concordat bluntly concluded that Manchester was the "regional capital" and there is "little sense in Liverpool seeking to challenge that reality". It must have been hard to suppress the sniggers. Whole industry sectors were carved out for non-competition, the kind of ones that generally required office space and high paying skills. Liverpool’s “unique attributes and distinctive economic strengths” won it tourism and culture, and then Manchester, with a belly full of everything else, went after that anyway with its £114m government funded Factory arts venue and it’s Art Council supported Manchester International Festival. Needless to say this sorry document - the Joint Concordat - was not in our interests.  It was in theirs. That a Liverpool Council Leader – Lib Dem, Mike Storey, saw fit to sign such a blatant sell-out of his constituents’ futures shows that he was nowhere near as clever as he thought he was. He was played pure and simple. Either that or he had a masochistic streak, though the fact he ended up in the House of Lords suggests he wasn’t the one feeling the pain. The story doesn’t end there of course – the drip, drip, drip of consequence – of capital and talent continuing to haemorrhage away. Companies like Castore, Redx and Biofortuna. The grass definitely greener on the other side.

I can’t condemn Manchester for acting in its own interests. I just want the same for Liverpool. I want us to wake up to our interests. To fight for them and to have the good sense to know when we are being had. To stop being a patsy. To stop playing the fool. Talk that cities don’t need to compete is fitting of the dunce cap and I think we’d all prefer to wear more desirable head gear.

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“That a Liverpool Council Leader – Lib Dem, Mike Storey, saw fit to sign such a blatant sell-out of his constituents’ futures shows that he was nowhere near as clever as he thought he was. He was played pure and simple.”

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The recent spat between local councillors and developers at Waterloo Dock was a symbol of another fine mess we’ve built for ourselves – another expression of Liverpool’s ability to trip on its own feet. Amongst the general rot and dereliction, we built a complex nest of low aspirations to house not Canada Geese, but local representatives, who like squawking chicks pretended their advocacy of ‘blue space’ was a defence of high aspiration and ‘world-class’ heritage. That phrase again. It was nothing of the kind.

The enraged opposition to the development of what is to any sane person a piece of wasteland was deeply embarrassing to watch. Frustrating attempts to encourage inward investment, councillors cronied up to self-interested NIMBYS who were out to protect their own river views. In doing so, they further entrenched an anti-capitalist, ‘scousers versus the world’ mentality. By pitching local people against ‘greedy developers’ and roping in heritage ‘concerns’, they found a new way to frustrate Liverpool’s aspirations, and in the process convinced some poor sod from the Planning Department to embarrass himself at the appeal. Thankfully on this occasion reason won out and the determined developer won the day. I suspect we’re wiser to their tricks now. The ‘build nothing’ types will find it harder to play their games in the future.

Rabbits were suddenly ‘discovered’ in Bixteth Gardens by campaigners against an office development. Photo by Gavin Allanwood on Unsplash

Even with the Waterloo Dock development getting over the line, there does seem to be a sense of red brick, low-rise defeatism in the city’s modern architectural landscape. Where cities like Manchester and Birmingham go big, Liverpool has managed to shroud its lack of urban aspiration in a thin veil of heritage and ill-informed talk of ‘human scale’. While Manchester and other progressive cities throw up new developments like confetti providing new homes, jobs and office spaces for international companies, Liverpool’s local councillors, like Labour’s Nick Small, shamefully protest against developments such as Pall Mall, a long overdue project to bring Grade A office space to a city that has one of the smallest portfolios of commercial floorspace in the country. 

Why did the protesters object? Rabbits. Now I’m all for the protection of wildlife but the former Liverpool Exchange station site is not the setting for Watership Down. I’d much rather see our public institutions looking to attract companies out of rival conurbations and into our own central business district, incentivising them to base in new, large-scale, glass, brick and steel office blocks. But that sounds too much like hard work. I guess it’s much easier to rationalise doing nothing by weaving an almost religious acceptance to it. Building is for other cities, it’s not for us. We have another vision. What is it? Don’t know.

What Liverpool needs desperately is to find leaders in business, politics and the community who are unashamedly ambitious. But what does that ambition look like? Ambition and aspiration for Liverpool should be in the form of a real, tangible plan to re-position the city at the forefront of northern politics and to openly and confidently shun any notion of northern capitals in Manchester. In fact, I would suggest making it a core strategy to pull as much investment, business and talent away from our northern neighbours and London as is humanly possible. Let them know they are in a fight. We Come Not To Play. Liverpool gains next to nothing from ‘collaboration’ with Manchester, never has and never will. If anything, in our naivete we are just helping to reinforce this self-defeating status quo.

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Michael McDonough is the Art Director and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a lead creative specialising in 3D and animation, film and conceptual spatial design.

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Referendum or bust – Liverpool’s last chance?

Liam Fogarty

A discredited administration hamstrung by scandal. A weakened leader eyed by pretenders to the throne. A collapse of trust. And, underlying it all, a sense of drift and a loss of status in the world. For Boris Johnson’s Britain read Joanne Anderson's Liverpool. Both increasingly tottering on the precipice.

Of course, it would be unfair to blame the city's current Mayor for more than a fraction of the woes afflicting Liverpool and its council. But her discarded pledge of a referendum to decide on whether to keep Liverpool's mayoral system was more than just another politician's broken promise. It was an affront to local democracy. The pitifully small response to the council’s subsequent governance consultation – just 3.5% of Liverpool residents replied - was inevitable. Launched in March, and conducted almost entirely online, the process was an artist's impression of a democratic exercise. The letter sent to each city household, directing its recipients to the Liverpool – Our Way Forward website, looked and read like a tax demand. Residents had 3 months to reply but a council taxpayer-funded "Have Your Say" supplement to promote the consultation was published with the Liverpool Echo on June 10th a mere ten days before the submission deadline. Perhaps if they were going to be this half-hearted they shouldn’t have even bothered. Its four vacuous pages contained plenty of room in which to set out the arguments for and against the various governance models on offer. Incredibly, it did not do so. An opportunity for meaningful engagement with Echo readers was spurned in what became a literal waste of space. 

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So what is to be done?

In his ground-breaking mayoral election campaign last year, as Liverpool absorbed the findings of the Caller Report into council misconduct, Independent candidate and eventual runner-up, Stephen Yip, called for a "re-set" of Liverpool City Council. He demanded top-to-bottom reforms in response to Caller's damning discoveries. The re-set phrase proved popular and was soon taken up by Labour's candidate, Joanne Anderson during her campaign. Once elected, however, she abandoned her commitment to resolve the mayoralty issue by means of a public vote, claiming a consultation would cost less than a full referendum which she deemed too expensive to justify. Since Joanne’s election, we have seen backsliding on the promises of more transparency and scrutiny of council business. Caller’s recommendation for a significant reduction in the number of councillors has been ignored, with the current 90 councillors being reduced merely to 85. Meanwhile, government-appointed commissioners now report that in several respects our council is going “backwards not forwards” in dealing with the issues it faces.

The loss of millions of pounds thanks to a botched energy contract showed systemic failings were not confined to the departments excoriated by Max Caller. There’s talk of more commissioners being drafted in, and more departments falling under their iron fist as skeletons continue to tumble out of closets. Not so much a re-set, then, as a return to politics as usual in Liverpool.

Stephen Yip and I agree that the first step towards an actual re-set is to let the people of Liverpool decide how their city should be led. Liverpool is local democracy’s ‘black hole,’ the only major city in England to have repeatedly denied its residents the chance to vote on how it should be run. The idea that Liverpool's citizens should be able to decide whether to keep or scrap the mayoral system is anathema to the control freaks at the Town Hall. Our politicians won't give us the mayoral referendum we are entitled to unless they are forced to. 

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Former Independent Mayoral Candidates, Liam Fogarty and Stephen Yip, launch ReSet Liverpool, a campaign to force Liverpool City Council to run a full referendum on city governance.

ReSet Liverpool

That’s why we are launching ReSet Liverpool, a petition-led campaign to give the people of the city the referendum they were promised. We reject the council's attempt to take such a huge decision on the city’s governance by itself. Options for the future running of Liverpool should be put directly to its residents at the ballot box.

Our petition aims to secure the 16,500 signatures (5% of the city's electorate) needed to trigger a referendum on whether Liverpool should retain the post of directly elected Mayor. A referendum held next May to coincide with scheduled elections for a Mayor and local councillors would come at minimal additional cost. 

The final say on this issue should belong to the people, not politicians. It’s a matter of principle. Self-serving attempts to sideline the electorate are destructive. They weaken the already-strained connection between the people of Liverpool and their local council and lead to greater cynicism and indifference. 

“The final say on this issue should belong to the people, not politicians. Options for the future running of Liverpool should be put directly to its residents at the ballot box.”

— Liam Fogarty

Without a referendum, Liverpool’s politicians are likely to revert to type. If they do move to abolish the mayoralty without public consent, then the simmering – and largely unreported - power struggles inside the council’s majority Labour group will burst open, absorbing the time and energies of all those involved. Mayor or no Mayor, in May 2023 every Liverpool council seat will be up for grabs on new electoral boundaries. As what is now 30 wards morphs into a whopping 70 smaller ones, once safe council positions will be under threat as councillors from the same party will be forced to compete with each other. The jockeying to be selected as candidates has already started and local parties’ fratricidal tendencies will be given full rein. The ward elections themselves will provide ideal conditions for the kind of hyper-local political warfare that appeals to party activists but no-one else. The chances of such a process producing a clear city vision,  strong civic leadership  and a coherent policy platform will be remote. Not for the first time, Liverpool politics will be all tactics and no strategy. 

For ReSet Liverpool, a referendum on the mayoralty is the very least the people of this city deserve. May be it can also be the start of a broader campaign to reform our council and renew our city. If you are registered to vote in Liverpool, download a petition form (HERE) and if they live in Liverpool, get your friends, family and neighbours to sign up. Together, we have a chance to help kick-start that overdue process of civic renewal. It could be the last chance we’ll get.

Liam Fogarty is co-founder of ReSet Liverpool. A journalist, broadcaster and lecturer, he ran as an independent in Liverpool’s first Mayoral Election in 2012, finishing second.

Further Information

To find out more about Reset Liverpool and to download a copy of the petition, visit www.resetliverpool.org. Note: Only Liverpool residents over the age of 18 who are registered to vote can sign the petition. Completed petition forms should be returned to:

Reset Liverpool

301 Tea Factory

Fleet Street

Liverpool

L1 4DQ

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Introducing the Assembly District

Michael McDonough

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Quite how Manchester Metro Mayor, Andy Burnham came by his coronation in the media as ‘King of the North’ is subject to conjecture.

Some such as journalist and author Brian Gloom speculate that it started as an internet meme, while others wonder whether it was a creation of Marketing Manchester, an agency never shy to position it’s home city as the centre of everything. Whatever its source, and Burnham has himself joked about ruling from a Game of Thrones-style castle, like all good observation comedy, its absurdity is centred on a degree of truth. You’d have to have been operating with your eyes closed since at least the emergence of David Cameron’s government in 2010, not to pick up the sense that Manchester has become the increasingly less unofficial capital of the north, much favoured by business, government ministers and media alike. It’s hard not to notice that whenever the north’s regional mayors get together for a photo op or conference, it’s Burnham that is usually centred as the pivot point around whom others orbit. 

You could say this position is much deserved. Over several decades Manchester has played a very successful and canny game and has done much in the running of its economy that is both admirable and instructive to other regions with ambitions to raise their own performance. But this article is not intended as a Manchester love-in. The fear from the outside is that other regions, most notably its closest neighbour Liverpool, are caught in something of a gravity well, heading towards the event horizon, where the blackhole sucking in wealth and talent becomes inescapable. 

The UK government appears to have been operating a policy known as agglomeration where the economies of towns increasingly centralise around cities, and the economies of cities are pulled towards the biggest and best of them. The idea is that a northern London will offer snowball effects that drive increasing productivity and opportunity. Any attempt to discuss the downsides are quickly dismissed as jealousy. But what happens to everywhere else? As any real political or investment efforts become increasingly centred on Manchester and Leeds, the north’s other towns and cities are forced to focus on more tertiary and lower value economic sectors to avoid this very obvious elephant in the room. No wonder there’s much discussion about transport. You need good trains and good roads to create a commuter belt. 

Whether the north actually needs a ‘King’ is moot, it seems to be getting one, whether it likes it or not. In which case, maybe that King (or future Queen) really does need a castle or administrative centre from which to watch over their lands.

I’m being facetious, of course. But there is one idea that’s been doing the rounds for decades about the governance of the north that never truly goes away, even if no one has quite had the courage to turn it into reality. I’m talking about a Northern Regional Assembly or Parliament – a new constitutional arrangement that would put meat on the bones of devolution. I think it’s worth considering, for two reasons. Firstly, because history teaches us that no matter which party is in power in Westminster, nothing really changes for us. A Northern Regional Assembly would be founded on the simple understanding that only the north can be trusted to look after the north. And the second reason is that, done right, an Assembly could help to counter the divisive politics of regional capitals and agglomeration economics. Power could be distributed in a way that lifts up many communities, rather than few. For this reason an assembly must never be located in Manchester. 

‘Let’s aim high. Consign talk of the ‘King of the North’ to the metaphorical dustbin and carve out a new sense of identity and purpose.’

I’ll leave the finer details to minds more attuned to the vagaries of politics and taxation, but it would almost certainly require a bonfire was made of existing local governance arrangements. This would not be yet another fatty layer of bureaucracy feeding off the twitching corpse of local democracy. It would be the pinnacle of a fundamental re-working of power – a place where the core cities and towns of the north would come together to fix and finance their priorities at scale. Cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Newcastle joining forces with the Hull’s, Sunderland’s, Blackpool’s and York’s with one objective in mind – to challenge the economic pull of London and re-position the north as the economic engine room of the UK.

Maybe that sounds fanciful. Can we really reverse the economic gravity of the last 150 years? I don’t know the answer to that but I’d sure like to try. We should have some confidence about what is possible. Most of the UKs core cities reside in the north and our economy is bigger than that of whole countries such as Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Portugal and Sweden. Our population is made up of 15 million souls and we account for about 20% of the UKs national GDP. While Westminster neglects to address the wealth inequalities that fuelled the demands for Brexit, isn’t it time we took power into our own hands and gave our region a stronger, collective voice? One where different parts of the north were incentivised to put aside regional rivalries and work together.

In which case, I’m going to ask you to imagine a world in which Liverpool becomes the focal point and home of that Northern Assembly. Is that really so far-fetched an idea? Some would immediately dismiss the prospect. Our council is after all essentially under special measures being guided towards competence by government appointed commissioners because we couldn’t manage it ourselves. What credentials do we have? But I’d simply say, why not? We may have had a politically turbulent history and a less than stunning present, but we also have a tradition in the last one hundred years of standing up for the many, not the few.  Perhaps there is no more natural home for a regional assembly based on pan-northern equality and fairness as opposed to agglomeration, soft power and resource thirsty regional capitals.

Besides, despite all its issues, Liverpool is a city with an enviable international draw, incredible setting and bags of waterfront space to house such an assembly. A parliament might actually give Liverpool Waters some actual purpose too, while raising our own city’s aspirations. Some of our own will decry it as pie in the sky. But let’s not throw rocks or weave excuses. Let’s aim high. Consign talk of the ‘King of the North’ to the metaphorical dustbin and carve out a new sense of identity and purpose. One that is not only forward looking and aspirational but is also collaborative with its neighbours and based on a desire to see balance, fairness and justice intertwined into the north’s wider politics. it’s already there in the minds and hearts of northern people. Now let’s put it there in the institutions that represent us.

And so in the rest of this article, I’ve taken the liberty of going ahead and designing it. I hope you don’t mind the presumption but they do say a picture is worth a thousand words. I’ve created a series of visuals to conceptualise a new government district centered on Liverpool’s Central Docks.

Assembly District - Principles and Functions

Assembly District fly through.

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Today, the site is owned by Peel Holdings and development plans are proceeding at a snail’s pace. A recent consultation was announced for some kind of canalside park, but it’s a blank canvass and no buildings have been announced. The creation of a new political ‘village’ or district laid out to intertwine with neighbouring developments such as Stanley Dock and Ten Streets could be the final piece of the jigsaw for Liverpool’s waterfront regeneration. 

This new district would have to accord with some key functional imperatives and some core design principles. For function, the area must be able to accommodate our representatives and supporting administrative staff comfortably and securely. It must capitalise on the economic opportunity by creating desirable workspace which will be attractive to inward investment, and it must be broadly open to the general public to enjoy offering new facilities  which are available to all.

From a design perspective, the development should be ambitious and contemporary, forward-looking, sustainable and transparent. This area should boast a ‘postcard design’ while being the embodiment of openness to enshrine in the built form the idea that our representatives work for us, not themselves or even their parties. A trigger for the designs should be northern solidarity. In addition, I’d like to create an element of pleasure through the creation of quality, yet surprising recreational space.

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The Ten Streets and Central Docks area today

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The Plan

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Conceptually, the Central Docks plot would be divided into two areas: river and canal side to the west and further inland to the east.  The waterside plots would feature the landmark structures and open space, while the east side could house complimentary mixed-use facilities including both work and residential schemes. Mirroring the adjacent Ten Streets grid pattern, the plans would see a series of new tightly packed, pedestrianised streets opening up the Central Docks site before reaching a series of new waterways and ‘blue spaces’ which will be reclaimed from parts of the site that are currently infilled docks.

New architecture on the site will be encouraged to straddle our quaysides, complimenting and working with water space rather than requiring for it to be filled in to create room for building. This in meant as both a symbolic and practical gesture of compromise in a city often at loggerheads with itself on how to reach for the stars architecturally without compromising existing heritage.

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The Ten Streets District, Plan View

The centre piece of this new district would be the Northern Assembly building. Built across a series of pillars and positioned across the quayside to create a floating form, the building would be in a perfect position for security being largely surrounded by water and accessed only from one side. As a landmark for the north of England, the assembly would feature a circular internal layout to encourage parliamentarians to work together as one collective, while ensuring all areas of the north where represented equally. Cladded in steel and glass, with an undulating façade, the building would take some inspiration from Germany’s Reichstag building in which the public are free to observe parliamentary sessions as part of a commitment to transparency. 

On the riverside of the Assembly building, a new public space would be built on a series of interconnected concrete pier structures inspired by Heatherwick Studio’s ground-breaking and beautiful Little Island Park in New York. Each of the up to 50 piers would represent core towns and cities as part of a linear park space on the water’s edge topped with attractive landscaping and robust Mersey-friendly planting. The piers are also symbolic of Liverpool’s position as an arrival and departure point for the whole of the north of England. Together with green spaces throughout the site, reclaimed and newly created blue space and interconnecting bridges this area would become a landmark open space for the city, a riverside space to think, debate, contemplate and engage with politics in a new heart of central Liverpool. 

Two other landmark buildings neighbouring the Assembly are proposed for the water-side plot – one striking, multi-use cultural building and one mixed use 35-storey office and hotel.

The office and hotel building has been given a classic robot form with square body, head and antennae – this slightly retro but nevertheless futuristic form pointing to the need to put the industries of tomorrow at the heart of the north's strategy. 

The form of the cultural building, which could house museums, exhibitions, performance and meeting spaces as well as a visitors centre, is modelled on a modern interpretation of Liverpool’s Anglican cathedral while it’s four brick turrets are an echo of the city’s landmark Liver Building. The overall effect is somewhat church-like to reflect the central role that faith and secular belief and moral values have in our communities and their deep historical roots in the region.

Transport

One of the key issues facing Liverpool’s central and north docks area is that of connectivity. To compare Central Docks to waterside redevelopment plots in London’s Battersea and Docklands areas it’s clear that a development of this scale and footfall would require a comprehensive transport strategy. 

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Conceptual design for Ten Streets station, Northern Line.

One possible solution would be the development of a station on the Merseyrail Northern Line to the western edge of the site. Built across existing railway viaducts and positioned equidistant between Moorfields and Sandhills. This new station could multiple audiences including the emerging creative Ten Streets district, Assembly District and also Everton’s Bramley Moore Stadium a few hundred yards north. 

One of the key factors slowing down the regeneration of the north Liverpool docks has been access to the city centre and transport in general. Whilst a station at Ten Streets would go a long way to addressing this problem, the influx of new high density development may increase the viability of further transport infrastructure. The plans to the east of Central Docks envisage a concentration of high density homes and commercial and administrative buildings. The substantially increased footfall and employment in the area could support the creation of a new light rail link connecting directly with Lime St station through the currently disused Waterloo/Victoria tunnel alignment. 

For illustrative purposes and to create a sense of arrival at the new Ten Streets station, I am proposing two wing-like structures addressing a new public square. Essentially abstract in form, they provide a modern interpretation of the industrial cranes that would once have been seen in the area. They also serve an important function, providing weather-proof covering for 4 escalators which take passengers up to the station’s platform level.

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The Northern Assembly is the first of a two part article exploring the development of the Central Docks area. For our next article I will be exploring how the Ten Streets district itself could take advantage of Liverpool’s digital and gaming sector and if extended pull the area closer to the city centre.

Michael McDonough is the Art Director and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a lead creative specialising in 3D and animation, film and conceptual spatial design.

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Face Value: What makes a good council?

Richard Kemp

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There have been a lot of comments on the Liverpolitan Twitter feed recently after they published Child Labour, an article about the number of young councillors coming on to the scene in Liverpool. 

I was struck by the defensive nature of some of them especially from those who had been elected as young councillors themselves. Yet no-one has suggested that young councillors are a bad thing. They can offer a viewpoint and an energy that older members of the chamber might struggle to bring. A good council will use the knowledge and energy of young people as part of a balanced team where their voices can be heard rather than dismissed as it so often is.

I thought that I might contribute to this discussion because although at 69, I’m clearly not a young councillor, I was once and my experience of moving through the ages might help the debate.  I was first elected at 22, became the equivalent of a Cabinet Member at 24, and after 39 years in office, I’m now the longest serving councillor in Liverpool. In a variety of roles including as national leader of Lib Dem councillors I have supported elected members in more than 50 councils across the country so I’ve seen a lot of local government – both the good and the bad.

This experience does hopefully give me a long-term perspective from which to answer two related questions which I want to address - ’What should a good council look like?’ and ‘What does a good councillor look like?’

So to the first question. In a nutshell, a council should look as much as possible like the people of the area it represents. This applies both to the elected side of a council and also to its workforce, but in this article I’m just focusing on the elected side. 

“When choosing candidates we have to be looking at factors like gender balance, ethnicity, age and class. Does what’s found in the chamber reflect what’s found out on the streets?”

Why is this important? Because having a diversity of councillors means that there is a diversity of knowledge and experiences within the council chamber. Different groups of people are impacted by decisions in different ways so having broad representation ensures that we keep our eyes open and our hearts sensitive to the different priorities of the groups that make up our population. That’s really important because even if our intentions are good as councillors we can’t presume we understand everything or even feel everything that is important to our electorate.

For example, I have never been discriminated against on the grounds of race, gender or sexuality. I can empathise with those who have and have a feeling for their challenges but I do not have that direct experience.  Perhaps it’s the same with generational differences. I wasn’t born into the computer age, so I don’t have that instinctive feel that younger people do when discussing the challenges of technology, the industries of the future, the pitfalls of social media and issues around how we best communicate with each other. Ultimately, each person has their own stories to tell, and the better our representation, the more able we are to harness them to improve policies and more effectively monitor their success from different perspectives.

All of this means that when choosing candidates to stand for our parties we have to be looking at factors like gender balance, ethnicity, age and class. Does what’s found in the chamber reflect what’s found out on the streets? It’s worth looking at some of the available statistics. In Liverpool, according to the last census data 51% of our population are female and 49% male, while about 14% are from ethnic minorities including those born in other countries. A wide range of faiths are represented. Our population trends slightly younger than the national average with the under 30s clustering in the centre and average ages increasing as you move outwards especially to the north.  When you start to look at profession and class, manual workers now make up a smaller proportion of our elected officials compared to when I first became a councillor, but that reflects changes in the city and society as a whole. The age of mass employment in big unionised factories like Tate & Lyle, Ogdens Tobacco, Dunlop, Courtaulds or, of course, the docks is long over, a decline which set in many years ago as computers and mechanisation took over.

Liverpool Council is  currently completing a survey of councillors but the last one, conducted five years ago, showed that only 40% of elected members were female. However, the last five years has brought about a big change in that figure with Liverpool now one of the few councils in the country to achieve gender parity. We appear to have made less progress in other areas. Later this year we will have access to the first results from the 2021 National Census. This will provide us with the most up-to-date information about the make-up of the city’s population compared to that of its councillors. Those results should prove useful as we continue to try to improve representation.

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Councillors from Liverpool and the Wirral had their say on our article, Child Labour

However, and this is an important point, diversity is not enough on its own. Having elected members that look like the community does not mean they’d make inherently better councillors. Being a councillor involves passion and compassion; with a strong civic desire to serve the community. It involves commitment. It involves hard work. Being who you are is only the start. It’s what you want to do and how you want to do that counts and it takes a council chamber full of people with vision and ability to make a good council that is both representative and capable.

If we turn our attention to the second question, ‘What does a good councillor looks like?’, we can see why the ideal council is difficult to create. Your average councillor has four calls upon their time. In addition to what can be the hard and demanding grind of the job of councillor, they also need to earn a living, care for their family and help run their political party which usually involves a lot of campaigning and canvassing. Juggling these different demands is a challenge and the level of difficulty lands differently on different people effected by things such as time of life, financial security, responsibilities for others and many other factors. 

Being a councillor in a big city like Liverpool is a particularly arduous task if you do it properly and most councillors of most parties do.  The life of a councillor involves attending council and committee meetings, keeping up-to-date with the constant stream of information and documents, coordinating with other councillors from your political group,  and undergoing professional training when necessary. And all the while you are trying to weigh up matters, figuring out what decisions you have to take, and the need to make decisions is continuous. We then have to work within the communities that we represent, fact-finding and campaigning alongside the many volunteers who keep community life ticking over. For many of us council life is almost 24/7 and 365 days a year.

It’s worth noting that councillors do not receive a salary. Instead they receive a basic annual allowance which is worth £10,590 plus expenses. Those councillors who have additional responsibilities such as Cabinet members receive additional Special Responsibility Allowances (SRAs) but of course, many do not. This means, that most have no choice but to work for a living. Very few employers like the idea of a member of their staff being a councillor. The fact that we can legally demand unpaid time off to a certain level is unattractive to many which is why councillors often work for the public sector, unions or choose to be self-employed.

Outside of work, councillors have families and face the same pressures as the rest of the population. Those with added responsibilities such as caring for ageing parents or young children will inevitably have more on their plate than those who aren’t dealing with such issues. This is of course not unique to councillors but it’s worth noting because for some perfectly able individuals it can be an impediment preventing them from running for office or continuing their work once elected. In my experience, it’s easier to find the time to do things when you are a grandparent rather than when you’re weighed down with the challenges of parenthood.

Finally, all councillors except perhaps independents have to work inside their own political party undertaking political campaigning and policy development not only for local but also for national elections. What will surprise people who always think of us as politicians, is that party work often takes up a very small percentage of our time. More often than not, we tend to think of ourselves as councillors and not politicians.

All of these four factors intervene at different times to affect what we can do as councillors and even whether we can continue to do the job. 

In future, if we want a more representative council we need as an organisation to understand the realities of these four competing pressures on councillors and provide support mechanisms to help people cope with them. For example, there’s a carers allowance whereby councillors with young children can get some support for childcare activities but none for those who have to care for relatives either older than themselves or those with physical or mental needs. 

“The question of money gets raised from time to time. Some believe councillors should be paid more to attract better candidates. I don’t think that more money would actually change the makeup of the council, nor should it.”

I often mentor Lib Dem council groups and young people who are thinking of standing for office or even sometimes those who have been already been elected and they often ask me if I think being a councillor is a good idea. My answer is invariably, “Yes, but think through what that will mean to you and yours.”

Being an elected representative is a huge learning experience which we often fail to capture. On the job, I learned how to speak in public, how big organisations work and how to work effectively within them. I developed many skills in political and managerial leadership. I also picked up a lot of knowledge about people, communities and the way that the public sector responds to needs and problems. 

I was lucky enough to find a job as a regeneration adviser which made use of those skills and knowledge sets. That was, however, by luck not judgement and no help was given to me to find work that would utilise my hard-earned experience. I think a major way forward for all councillors, except for old gimmers like me, would be to find a way of accrediting the learning experiences and training that we have acquired. Having people who know how the public sector works, can chair meetings, can speak in public, and understand how to interpret balance sheets and trading accounts should be a very attractive proposition for both public and private sectors if we could capture that and enable us to put it on our CVs.

For very practical reasons there are life factors which will inhibit the very young and very old from being councillors. Most young people want to experience life in a range of educational, work and leisure activities before settling down. At the other end of the timeline, I am finding it increasingly difficult to cope with some of the grind of council work. I can now only deliver leaflets for 2.5 hours before the knees go!

But saying that, there is an advantage to being an ‘old hand’. I have developed a deep well of ‘life experience’, some of it gained though my time at the council, but much of it elsewhere.  I’ve learned how to listen, how and when to intervene, how to make a point and when it’s better to keep my mouth shut. I now have the confidence to know that I know a lot, but also that it’s OK to admit that there are areas where I know little or do not have the skills required. Always strive to surround yourself with great people – you don’t have to be an expert in everything.

The question of money gets raised from time to time. Some believe that councillors should be paid more to attract better candidates. I don’t think that more money would actually change the makeup of the council, nor should it. When I was first a councillor, we only received an allowance of £10 a day which wasn’t a lot of money even in 1975! But it didn’t affect my desire to do the job. You have to do it because you care and because you feel that being a councillor is your way of giving back to the community that you live in.

I’ve had a great deal of pleasure and satisfaction from my years as a councillor, but it has never been an easy job. When people tell me I am not doing enough of this or that or spending my time wrongly, I always challenge them to stand for the council themselves. Being an angry couch potato or keyboard warrior is much easier and few take up the challenge.

Most councillors of all parties do their best. Everyone can help us to do our job better by supporting us with their time and knowledge in a positive way. If you want more good councillors think of ways in which you could help the ones you’ve got now – that is if you are not prepared to put yourself to the electoral test!

Richard Kemp is the longest standing councillor in Liverpool. He is also the Leader of the Liverpool Liberal Democrat Group.

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Child Labour

Michael McDonough and Paul Bryan

The latest local election results have confirmed an ongoing trend - Liverpool councillors (especially Labour ones) are being recruited at an ever younger age.

Sam East (Warbreck) and Ellie Byrne (Everton) both in their early twenties, join the likes of Harry Doyle (Knotty Ash), Frazer Lake (Fazakerley) and Sarah Doyle (Riverside) who became councillors at ages 22, 23, and 24 respectively (give or take the odd month – feel free to correct us). The latter three are now all serving in senior positions as part of the Mayor’s Cabinet. 

Labour are not the only ones playing to this trend though. On the Wirral, Jake Booth, 19, took a seat last year for the Conservatives while in Liverpool the Tories recently appointed the frankly mature in comparison, Dr David Jeffery as their Chairman at the ripe old age of 27 (though he’s not a councillor). 

The emergence of ever more fresh-faced local political candidates, which is often presented as energising and key to connecting with the city’s younger generation is nevertheless curious. Traditionally, solid life experience and proven competence in some other field of endeavour have been seen as valuable traits essential to making a decent fist of a job in public office. Demonstrable skills and previous success, which take time to accrue,  have acted as a semi-reliable predictor that a candidate will land on their feet. But that kind of thinking is out of fashion. A fresh, young face is the recipe de jour.

Except it doesn’t seem to be working. The turnouts in the latest by-elections were abysmal- the puny 17% turnout in Warbreck putting the even more atrocious 14% in Everton to shame. Perhaps this should be a lesson that viewing politics though the lens of identity resonates far less than actually being credible.

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Clockwise from top-left: Ellie Byrne and Sam East on the campaign trail; Sam East promotional leaflet; Now councillors, Ellie Byrne and Sam East celebrate their success in winning the seats of Everton and Warbreck; Councillor, Cabinet member and Assistant Mayor, Harry Doyle, now 25, responsible for Culture and the Visitor Economy

None of this is to suggest that young people shouldn’t be in politics - far from it! And you could argue the older generation haven’t exactly pulled up any trees. Age and ability are not guaranteed bedfellows and we’ve all met unwise old-hands who are best left in the stable. But surely, even amongst the parroted outcries of ageism, track record counts for something?

The comments in the Liverpool Echo were a peach. “Shouldn’t those two be in school?” said one. “What life experiences can they bring to their roles. Jesus Christ!” said another.  L3EFC expressed some doubt that “People fresh out of Uni” would be able to “stand up to the people who grease the wheels in this town.”

Which means we have to ask the question… can it be right that such inexperienced councillors are representing these deeply challenged areas which are crying out for leadership that can deliver on the ground? Will Councillor Ellie Byrne, the daughter of a sitting MP, deliver the kind of positive change Everton desperately needs? Does Councillor Sam East have the real-world nous to effectively tackle the issues holding back Warbreck? Or are these two eager and no doubt able politicians the product of a disinterested local Labour machine that doesn’t care or need to care about who it puts forward for election? 

“The comments in the Liverpool Echo were a peach. ‘Shouldn’t those two be in school?’ said one. ‘What life experiences can they bring to their roles? Jesus Christ!’ said another.”

Of course, there are several reasons why young candidates are so attractive to party leadership. On the upside, they offer the classic and generally much needed injection of new blood. They hold out the potential for new ideas and new energy. And in Liverpool, where there is a dark shadow over much that has gone before, you can understand the desire to clear the decks and start afresh. But there’s another darker reason. Young councillors are pliable. They’re more likely to do what they’re told. While they’re still building their confidence, they won’t challenge the top dogs and that’s useful when your grip on power is weak. Mayor Joanne Anderson, herself relatively inexperienced as a councillor, has introduced young members to her Cabinet with responsibility for key portfolios including Development and Economy, Adult and Social Care, and Culture and Tourism. Without casting any aspersions on Cabinet members talents or potential, you can see their appeal.

We have to ask where the Liberal Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives and Greens are in all of this? Despite making admirable gains in many wards they still haven’t made much of a dent in the city’s ‘red rosette’ Labour strongholds and this despite the Caller Report offering them ammunition on a platter. As strong a campaign as the Green Party’s Kevin Robinson-Hale ran in Everton (albeit clearly under-resourced) he still only polled 362 votes. In Warbreck, the Lib Dems Karen Afford polled 874. This is not what engagement looks like. Perhaps it’s time all parties in the city took a long hard look at who they’re putting forward for local elections, what pledges are being made and why for the moment so many amongst the electorate simply couldn’t give a toss about what their local political parties have to say. 

Councillor Ellie Bryne’s election pledges to Everton given the Liverpolitan treatment

Ellie Byrne’s vacuous election promises were a case in point and a classic example of how an unengaged electorate enable party cynicism. Why bother getting too specific or measurable with your commitments when no-one is asking for it might be the rejoinder of the spin doctors, but it feeds the descent into low participation. A deeper critique suggests a more existential worry – our parties just don’t have any answers, scraping around in the bargain bin of ideas, and plucking out little more than platitudes of intention. Heaven forbid someone might actually come up with a plan to drive more employment.

It must be said in Liverpool the wheels turn more slowly. Many voters’ unflinching loyalty to party blinds them to individual failures, provoking little more than a shrug of resignation. Or worse, it depresses their sense of the possible. And that’s deadly, because if you don’t believe you can do much in life, the world has a tendency to deliver on your expectations.

But you can only hoodwink the voters for so long. When it comes to delivering results in the four years of office a councillor receives, competence beats willing nine times out of ten. A fresh face may serve you well enough amongst the cheap thrills of an election campaign, but does it really get the job done? Eventually, without the ideas or the know-how to deliver on them, you’ll get found out.

There is the temptation in Liverpool to think that little changes in the political sphere. That despite the odd bit of noise within the ruling party, on the outside all is stable and unchanging. A recent electoral modelling exercise suggested the upcoming 2023 boundary changes in electoral wards would have only the most superficial of effects.  Labour, instead of holding 78% of council seats would now hold 79% it predicted. So much for turbulent times.

But bubbling away under the surface, something is happening and the results will be unpredictable. The recent by-elections were a warning, not just to Labour but to all parties. Sooner or later, voters will do what voters do. They don’t like being taken for granted. 

All of this opens up a wider question about the city and its communities. Why are there so few people from a more professional background standing for election? What exactly is turning them off? Many of these people will be successful in their own lives. Could there be some really strong politicians and visionaries amongst the roughly 70% who don’t vote in local elections? Are there talented leaders amongst those Liverpolitans who look on at an unwelcoming, opaque and sewn-up political culture with distaste and disengagement?

Decades of brain-drain have undoubtedly had an impact. Liverpool has jettisoned so much of its professional class who left in search of opportunity they could not find at home. And now the parties are trying to fill the void by turning to ever younger graduates. If the trend continues we may well see in the coming years candidates organising their election campaigns around their GCSE examination calendar. An 18-year old Jake Morrison, who triumphed in 2011 over former Council Leader, Mike Storey to win the Wavertree seat may have well been a harbinger of times to come. He retired from politics aged 22.

Of course, at Liverpolitan, we always wish newly elected councillors well and hope to be pleasantly surprised by the new additions but we’d argue their election success is symptomatic of a much bigger elephant in the room, a room that clearly has fewer and fewer adults. It is a room dominated by established party complacency and a dash of arrogance; a city electorate detached from politics and a political culture devoid of real local talent and energy putting itself forward.

Michael McDonough is the Art Director and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a lead creative specialising in 3D and animation, film and conceptual spatial design.

Paul Bryan is the Editor and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a freelance content writer, script editor, communications strategist and creative coach

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How should we be governed? Six parties have their say…

Liverpolitan

Well, we might not have got the referendum we wanted but the people of Liverpool still have a chance to have their say on how the city is run. The Council’s public consultation on future governance models is now open and at Liverpolitan we think you should get involved.

Healthy democracies require participation and in a city that often sets a high bar on shenanigans, figuring out how to keep our representatives and over-lords in check and on-track seems like a worthwhile way to spend our spring evenings.

So what do you need to do?

Visit https://liverpoolourwayforward.com

Read about the three options on the table, weigh up the pros and cons, talk to your friends and family, have a row about it, and complete the online survey by no later than the 20th June 2022.

The three options presented are:

1) The Mayor and Cabinet model – what we have now

2) The Leader and Cabinet model – what we had previously

3) The Committee model – what we had before the year 2000

Once the results of the consultation are in it’s then up to our councillors to decide how or indeed whether to implement the results. That may leave wiggle-room for all kinds of disagreements but there’s a strong suggestion that parties will attempt to honour the outcome. Any changes that take place will be implemented from the 4th May 2023 at the local elections.

But which models do each of the parties support?

We asked six local political parties – Labour, Liberal Democrats, The Green Party, The Conservatives, The Liberal Party and the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) to write up to 400 words stating which of the three governance models they favour and why. Each party either has local councillors in Liverpool now or in the case of the Conservatives and TUSC regularly field candidates in local elections.

Here’s what they had to say.

The Labour Party position

We approached Major Joanne Anderson for comment but did not receive a reply, although in a previous interview on BBC Radio Merseyside she said “I want to say neutral." However, an official party spokesperson gave us this statement:

by a Liverpool Party spokesperson

“The city wide consultation is now open and the Labour Party is committed to listening to what the residents of Liverpool have to say about how the City Council is run. It is important that no political party pre-judges the outcome of the consultation and that residents feel that that their voices are being heard. Based on the results of the consultation, the Labour Party will then take a formal position on the governance of our city.”

Model favoured: Undecided

Liverpolitan says: Labour’s position is not to have a position until the results of the consultation are in. They will then decide on their favoured model ‘based on the results’.

The Liberal Democrat position

by Councillor Richard Kemp, Leader, Liverpool Liberal Democrats

The ‘committee system’ is the Lib Dem choice for Liverpool’s governance

“There are three choices allowed in law by which the council can govern itself although some modifications can be made to the Leader and Committee models.

“I am working on the assumption that few in Liverpool would be mad enough to vote to keep the Mayoral system as it has been so badly devalued by Joe Anderson.

“The Leader and Cabinet model has many of the bad mechanisms that are contained in the Mayoral model. Much has been made of the fact that this is the model that the Lib Dems introduced in 2000 but we had little choice because the only two options that were available to us were the Mayoral or Leader models. Both of them concentrate power in the hands of a few people and do so in a way which encourages secrecy and makes it very difficult to challenge what the Cabinet wants to do. The Leader model was the least bad option!

“Since 2012, a third way has been available which is called the Committee system. This means that decisions are taken not by a one-party cabinet but by a number of committees which are representative of the political make-up of the council. That means that:

1. Decisions can be challenged at the time they are made by members of both the biggest party and the other parties on the council.

2. All councillors will be involved in decision making which means that they will know more about what is going on and have to account for the decisions that they make to the people.

3. The people of Liverpool will be more involved as well because there are far more people that they can ‘nobble’ about these decisions.

4. The system is much more accountable and transparent with far fewer decisions being made in the dark recesses of the council.

“We believe that this is the best way forward and will campaign for it in the coming months. However, there is no point in consulting with the people of Liverpool unless we are prepared to debate the issues with them and take heed of what they have to say. We hope that a clear expression of what people want will come out of the consultation. We will then support the people’s views and I challenge the other parties to do exactly the same.”

Model favoured: The Committee system

Liverpolitan says: The Lib Dem’s position is clear – they will be campaigning in favour of a Committee structure of governance but promise to abide by the results of the consultation.

The Green Party position

by Councillor Tom Crone, Leader, Liverpool Green Party

Democratic decision-making for a cooperative political culture

“We are very critical of this consultation. Once again, the people of Liverpool are being denied a proper say on how we are governed. In 2012, while voters in cities across the country were asked if they wanted an elected mayor, Liverpool Labour decided they knew best and imposed the mayoral model. The result was a decade of chaotic mismanagement. Now the city council is having to work round the clock trying to fix the mess left behind.

“This consultation does not have the same democratic authority as a referendum. Having three options makes a clear, unambiguous decision unlikely. The responses will need interpreting, and that will still leave the final decision with the Labour Party. That has a nasty whiff about it. We would much prefer to trust the people of Liverpool with the final decision.

“The Greens will be making the case for adopting the committee system. The committee system involves many more councillors in decision making and policy development. Under the current system even most Labour councillors have very little to do with real decision making. It is only Cabinet members who have real executive powers. Other democratically elected councillors are simply shut out. Even within the Cabinet, the Mayor sets the agenda and can predetermine outcomes. Power is really concentrated in a very small number of individuals. This leads to poor decision making, not least because it fails to make use of the skills and experiences of all the 90 councillors elected to represent their communities.

“The committee system, as well as sharing out power more fairly, also encourages much more constructive cross party working. The public rightly complains about “yah-boo” politics and it is shocking how often our debates in council chamber descend into pointless political point-scoring because really decisions are taken elsewhere. A committee system means different parties having to sit down together and really decide how best to deliver for the people of Liverpool. Councillors will soon realise that they agree on a lot, while learning to respect distinctive perspectives.

“The imposed Mayoral system opened the door to the shame of the Joe Anderson years, and slammed it shut on transparency and democratic accountability. It’s time to ditch the personality politics and let the people back in.”

Model favoured: The Committee model

Liverpolitan says: The Green Party’s position is clear – they will be ‘making the case’ for a Committee structure of governance.

The Conservative Party position

by Dr David Jeffery, Chairman, Liverpool Conservatives

The voters should decide whether we have a Mayor, not Liverpool Labour

“In 2012, referendums were held across 11 of England’s large cities on whether to introduce directly elected mayors. One city was conspicuous by its absence: Liverpool. Instead, in their infinite wisdom, the Labour-run city council decided to ignore the people and voted to bypass a referendum. They introduced the mayoral position by stealth, and parachuted in Joe Anderson – and we all know how that turned out. Of the three authorities which have adopted and then subsequently abolished the mayoral system, all three have done so following a referendum. If Liverpool Labour get their way, once again one city will be conspicuous by its absence: Liverpool.

“The truth is that this Labour council want to ignore voters. This consultation is a gimmick – the result is a foregone conclusion, likely designed to sooth internal party arguments and resentments that have built up under Joe Anderson. We’re told by Labour that a referendum would be too expensive - never mind the fact that seven Labour councillors rebelled over Labour’s budget, which built up excessive financial reserves – but those more sceptical than I might argue it’s not a surprise that this move came after Labour were forced into a humiliating second round of voting in the 2021 mayoral election.

“Decisions on how our city is run should not be made from on high in Labour Party backrooms. Our executive arrangements should not be a consequence of internal Labour Party management. This city’s government is not their plaything, and to treat it as such is an insult to voters.

“There are good arguments for a Mayor: studies have shown that, compared to a council leader, mayors better represent the whole city, are more outward-looking, and are better at bringing much-needed investment into the city. Mayors are put in office by the people, whilst council leaders are selected in grubby back-room deals within their own party, and as such mayors have a better claim to speak for the city as a whole.

“Indeed, it is arguable that the real issues with Liverpool’s politics isn’t the mayoral system, but the fact that Liverpool Labour allowed Joe Anderson to abolish the mayoral scrutiny committee because he didn’t like the type of scrutiny he was receiving.

“Liverpool Labour should do the right thing and give the people of Liverpool a vote on how they are governed. It really is that simple.”

Model favoured: Undecided

Liverpolitan says: The Conservative Party have yet to take a formal position but do see merits in the Mayoral system. However, they believe that it should be up to the voters, not parties to decide which model to choose through the implementation of a referendum.

The Liberal Party position

by Councillor Steve Radford, Leader, The Liberal Party

Time to wake up. Keep the Mayor, adopt Proportional Representation and ask questions

“In over 40 years in politics I’ve seen corruption and abuse of power in all models of local government in Liverpool.

“In the Militant years I saw the sale of land at knock-down prices, council officers withholding information, dodgy minutes and record keeping and much more that I sadly can’t put into print. And that was under the committee system.

“Key to the abuse of council procedures was a willingness by some to turn a blind eye to those who broke or undermined the rules. Later on, during the Lib Dem years things were little different and legal battles had to be fought just to uphold the basic right of council members to attend certain public meetings. That was under the Leader and Cabinet model.

“One of the reasons I fear abuse of power has gone on for so long in Liverpool is the failure of the police to uphold the law. Today, they are tasked with some very important investigations under Operations Aloft and Sheridan that have been triggered during the years of the Mayor and Cabinet model. We should watch the outcome of those investigations closely.

“So what’s the answer? Firstly, we must get rid of the first past the post voting system than gives an inflated majority to a lead party, creating a vacuum of safe seats where the electorate is totally taken for granted.

“Secondly, we need senior council officers selected on merit, not on how subservient they are to the ruling party. Some have been brave enough to stand up for professional standards. Others have not.

“On to the Mayoralty. Without a doubt, both central government and the business community prefer a Mayor with an agenda focused on the whole city, rather than a Leader who is just accountable to a ward and their own political council group.

“Liverpool is an internationally recognised city and we need a Mayor to put us on a level playing field with our global peers. If Liverpool has in the past elected the wrong mayors that responsibility ultimately lies with the electorate. Being candid, it’s about time residents looked more at the person, and less at the colour of the rosette.

“Some readers may know that I chair the City Region Scrutiny Committee – and from that role I can see how the Metro Mayor, Steve Rotheram quietly secures funds for the region by adopting more mature and less confrontational politics.

“We should have a Mayor but we need a more diverse council elected by proportional representation, and we need a more curious electorate willing to ask difficult questions of the candidates who canvass for their votes.”

Model favoured: Mayor with Cabinet

Liverpolitan says: The Liberal Party position is clear – they support retaining the Mayor with Cabinet structure of governance, but want to see the adoption of city-wide proportional representation for local elections.

The Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) position

by Roger Bannister, Leader, Liverpool TUSC

Response to Proposals on City Governance

“Three proposals have been put forward on models for council governance in advance of the ending of the term of office for the directly elected Mayor in 2023, which are referred to as The Mayor and Cabinet Model, The Leader and Cabinet Model and the Committee Model. Of these three models, TUSC supports the Committee model.

“TUSC takes this position because it is the Committee Model that gives most powers to the directly elected councillors, rather than concentrating many of them in the hands of one person, as the Mayor and Cabinet Model does, or in the hands of a relatively small number of people as the Leader and Cabinet Model does.

“It is the strong view of TUSC that the electorate is best served when power is more evenly shared amongst councillors, so that by making representation to a Ward Councillor about an issue, that councillor will be able to exert influence effectively on behalf of the people that he/she represents. This is less likely to be the case with the other two models.

“It is our belief that both the Mayor and Cabinet and the Leader and Cabinet models were devised in order to ‘speed up’ the council decision making process, and whilst this is not a bad thing in itself, if it is done at the expense of democratic process, it is potentially prone to corrupt practice. Given the current involvement of the police in the municipal affairs of Liverpool, this point must be taken very seriously indeed.

“It is also our belief that there is a large and growing disconnection from, and cynicism in local politics in Liverpool, which can be expressed quite vehemently when people speak to TUSC candidates and supporters during election periods. The introduction of a directly elected Mayor, not as in most cities following a referendum, but by will of the Council alone, has done little to halt this trend.

“Local government in Liverpool is at a crucial stage, with democracy under attack both from the recommendations of Max Caller, with a reduced number of councillors, and elections only on a four yearly basis. Now is not the time to further reduce democratic accountability as the first two options would do.”

Model favoured: Committee system

Liverpolitan says: The Liverpool Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) position is clear – they support the Committee structure of governance.

So there you have it. Some for the Committee system, some leaning towards keeping the Mayoral model and some steadfastly neutral or yet to declare. But now it’s over to you. Each model has its advantages and disadvantages. What do you think?

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Once Byrned, twice shy?

Paul Bryan

The upcoming council by-election in Everton Ward (April 7th) has thrown up an interesting wrinkle. Labour’s candidate is a certain Ellie Byrne – a young woman in her early twenties who until recently we’d never heard of.

She keeps a fairly low profile on social media and there’s not much online to suggest she’s previously made a mark as an activist. Yet here she is standing for political office in one of the poorest wards in the country. And being Labour’s candidate in a one-horse, red-rose town, she’s almost certain to win. Which begs the question, who is she? And how did she win the nomination to represent Labour?

Let’s be honest about what caught our attention here. It’s that surname – Byrne. Sounds familiar. And it should because it’s also name of the previous incumbent, Ian Byrne, who announced his resignation at a feisty town hall meeting in January, which triggered this by-election. Ian Byrne is of note for two reasons. Firstly, because he is Ian ‘Two Jobs’ Byrne - the Everton councillor who also became the MP for Liverpool West Derby at the 2019 general election and who broke electoral convention and the rules of good sense by refusing to step down for over two years from his council position. He obviously felt the citizens of Everton and the citizens of West Derby needed him that badly that he had to represent them both. Lucky them.

The other reason why Ian Byrne is of note is because he is Ellie Byrne’s dad, although you wouldn’t know it by looking at any of Labour’s campaign materials. They and the Liverpool Echo which reported her selection are steering well clear of revealing the truth of their relationship as confirmed by residents who have been paid a visit by the Labour team. So what we have here, for clarity is the prospect of a father handing over the baton of office in his electoral ward to his young daughter, as if it was some kind of private enterprise. Now to be fair, there is going to be an election which has to be won, and Liverpool, it must be said, has a long history of keeping it in the family and I’m not talking about the propensity of Andersons (not related). A quick flick through the history books reveals a host of siblings, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters, cousins and aunts who have been regular suckers of the proverbial town hall teat. Peter Kilfoyle’s book, ‘Left Behind’ is very good on this topic.

What do we know about her? From her Facebook profile we know she’s partial to Cadbury’s Cream Eggs, Hannah Montana, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians and for some reason likes Justin Bieber High School.

But still, does it pass the smell test? Given everything that we’ve recently learned about mismanagement and suspected corruption, after the police investigations and arrests, and Labour’s own Hanson Report into what it found to be a ‘toxic culture’ within the Liverpool Labour Group, wouldn’t you bend over backwards to avoid even giving the slightest impression of impropriety or self-serving?  Wouldn’t a genuine sense of civic duty demand it?

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Still, this could all be cleared up really easily. An interview with the candidate herself would be the chance for her to make her case and show what she’s made of. To show that she’s got here under her own steam. Because maybe she has. But sadly, the Labour Party are not letting her off the leash. No interviews allowed. Such a stance doesn’t breed confidence.

Liverpolitan spoke to Sheila Murphy, who was appointed by Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) to oversee the clean-up of the Liverpool Labour group. She was not having it.

“You’re not the only person wanting to speak to Ellie and there’s a bit of a story developing which I think is unfair. Ellie has been a member of the Labour Party for some time and is active in her community. She was selected by Everton members as part of a rigorous process based on her own ability but there won’t be any interviews.”

Sheila was keen to get across the message that Ellie was one of two young candidates (the other standing in Warbreck) and that if the Labour Party was to reinvigorate itself “these are just the kind of people we need to represent us.”

It’s certainly true that Ellie’s candidacy was supported by the official Labour Party apparatus. Following the Caller report, it was announced that candidate lists would be approved by the NEC at least until 2026. Everton ward members made their selection from a short-list that included Brian Dowling and Jean Barrett, both long-time party activists. Speaking to The Post, neither losing candidate had any complaints and positively glowed in their assessments of Ellie.  

But doubts still remain. What do we really know about her? She grew up locally, attending Our Lady Immaculate and Notre Dame schools. She claims to have worked in the L6 Community Centre at some point possibly assisting with her father’s foodbank campaigns such as Right to Food. Her spartan Linkedin profile says she graduated from Liverpool University in 2021 with a degree in Law and History. From her social media profile on Facebook we know she’s partial to Cadbury’s Cream Eggs, Hannah Montana, and Keeping Up with the Kardashians and for some reason likes Justin Bieber High School. We also know that she was once pictured standing next to her ever-present dad and Jeremy Corbyn and that she seems to like posting shots of her pouting to the camera although she doesn’t post much at all and she’s hard to find on Twitter, Instagram and Tik Tok. What doesn’t shine out in any of the publicly available information is any kind of political heritage at all. Unless you include liking the Happy Pets app.

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Labour campaign leaflet for Ellie Byrne (Everton ward, March 2022)

None of which is definitely a deal-breaker. Social media is an unreliable tool at the best of times although it’s all we’ve got if she won’t talk to us. But if there’s more to her and she wants your vote, I think she owes it to the electorate to come into the sunlight and tell us what she really thinks in her own words. What she stands for, and what she believes. A campaign leaflet produced by the party machine won’t cut it. If nothing else she should do it to prove that she isn’t just her father’s mouthpiece. That she’s got a mind of her own and the ability to make a difference. Otherwise, the faithful are just being taken for a ride. Again.

Liverpolitan spoke to some of the other parties and candidates contesting the seat. Kevin Robinson-Hale of the Green Party was previously a Chair of Labour’s Everton branch before quitting in 2019, a man well-versed in the ways of the dominant party around here. Yet he seemed a bit reticent to open up, “I haven’t got an opinion on Ian and I don’t know Ellie”, he said. He just felt that Everton voters “shouldn’t get a candidate they’ve never heard of” and residents shouldn’t be forced to “go out of their way to try and get things done.” He was at pains to say that unlike others he wouldn’t be looking to use the council seat as a stepping stone to parliament.

We also heard from Local Lib Dem Leader, Richard Kemp, who was quick to shoot down any suggestions of nepotism. “Having relatives as a fellow councillor is not unusual,” he told us. “My wife served alongside me for 23 years.” Indeed. But then he performed an about-face, thundering into his keyboard “Labour now seems to favour the inherited system of power and patronage in Liverpool! What next? Baron Byrne of West Derby!?” Richard seemed particularly exercised that Ian Byrne had timed his resignation “to allow his daughter to reach 18”, a curious piece of factual inaccuracy given that as we pointed out earlier, Ellie is actually a university graduate going on 23 years old. That snippet I suspect was picked up from a recent email to Liverpool Council and the Government Commissioners into which he was cc’d from a ‘Ms Bett and Residents’ who are extremely exercised by the selection of Ellie as Labour’s candidate. Although, he may have picked it up from a separate anonymous email from ‘Labour Activists in Everton Ward’ who are equally infuriated. 

“Does Labour condone nepotism as a way to recruit councillor candidates?” they wrote. “To say we are startled by this information that the Candidate for this by-election is actually the daughter of the outgoing councillor is an understatement and we hope the National Labour Party if not the local Everton CLP rectify this situation before the election date to avoid a national scandal.”

Clearly, beneath the surface all is not calm in Everton ward and despite the efforts of Labour Party fixers, there appears to be considerable disquiet at Ellie’s selection at least amongst some of the group’s natural supporters. Right now, we’re left to wonder, what is it that makes Miss Byrne the perfect candidate to represent the interests of a ward which struggles with the basics of food and employment? Until, she speaks up we’ll never know. I guess the voters of Everton will just have to make up their own minds. But if the continual re-election of Malcolm ‘Milk'em’ Kennedy by neighbouring Kirkdale - who chose to live in Spain rather than in Liverpool - is anything to go by ... it looks like there will be few obstacles to Ellie Byrne enjoying a glittering political career, whether she’s up to the job or not. He may well have reluctantly stepped aside (three years after he perhaps should have done) but you can bet Ellie will be doing her best to keep the red flag flying, under the watchful guidance of Dad, Ian.

Paul Bryan is the Editor and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a freelance content writer, script editor, communications strategist and creative coach.

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No Platforming: Taking statues off their pedestals

Ed Williams

An unforeseen consequence of the enforced closure of our cultural institutions during the recent ‘lockdowns’ is that the curious and bored alike encountered, perhaps for the first time, the numerous statutes and public monuments located in our major towns and cities.  Much like an open air exhibition, these free ‘exhibits’ were one of the few cultural experiences available during the uncertain and tedious days of enforced ennui.

Liverpool, like many cities of a similar ‘vintage’, has a plethora of statues. They are a testament to the city’s ‘fathers’ and an attempt to engender a sense of civic pride, commemorating as they do the legacy of the ‘big men’, the ‘great and the good’. These honoraries were predominately white, bourgeoisie males who (allegedly) conformed to the idealised values of piety, philanthropy, the championing of free trade or military prowess in some overseas campaign.

Though for many such art works elicit nothing more than indifference as they hurry past in the rain, for others contemporary reaction has become deeply politicised, ranging from visceral contempt to staunch defence.  Most graphically, the toppling in Bristol of the statue of slave trading merchant Edward Colston and the perceived threat posed to others draws attention to the fiercely contested debate between those who seek their removal and those who feel that such change represents an existential challenge to ‘tradition’ and ‘history’, a reductive dispute that places figurative sculpture very much on the battle front in the ongoing ‘culture wars’. In light of such a polarised debate perhaps there is an alternative approach to removal or maintaining the status quo, one which seeks to re-imagine the role of public figurative sculpture altogether. Fundamental to this approach is to question why do sculptures exist? What, if any, function do they serve and can these aims be achieved via alternative means?

Different approaches to the statue problem. Some take direct inspiration from events in Bristol…

‘History is complicated so we have made some judgment calls’, says the Topple the Racists website, which has compiled a map of statues and monuments which celebrate aspects of Britain’s colonial past. Despite the website’s name it claims its aim is to ‘promote debate’.

The vogue for erecting sculptures of the ‘worthy’ emerged in Britain during the late eighteenth century, a period in which the nascent British Empire sought to emulate, through wholesale adoption, the tastes and virtues of the great classical civilizations of Greece and Rome.

This fascination with statues reached its peak in the Victorian era when it approached something akin to mania. Liverpool, like the majority of towns and cities in the North of England had experienced relatively recent urbanisation. Unlike those great ecclesiastical centres of York, Chester, Hexham or Durham, most of the ‘boom’ towns of the Industrial Revolution lacked the convivial Roman ruins, medieval fortifications, or ancient sites of worship that conveyed a sense of historic importance, so a new civic story was required for these modern metropolises. Sculpture allowed a sense of ‘history’ to be created instantly.  Committing a likeness to bronze, or more commonly embalming in marble those local or national heroes provided more than just a mnemonic memory device for the masses (something which the recently developed art of photography was mastering with ever greater verisimilitude). The statue was first and foremost a didactic tool for conveying officially sanctioned moral education. ‘Here before you stands’, his (rarely her) virtues and triumphs, dates and places listed instructively. This way, civic history, like classical history can be taught by rote through stone to future generations of proud civic citizens.

The toppling in Bristol of the statue of Edward Colston and the perceived threat posed to others places figurative sculpture very much on the battle front in the ongoing ‘culture wars’.

These moral lessons were further, powerfully enhanced by the sighting of works on plinths. The public were compelled to literally ‘look up’ to these individuals, lending them an almost god-like aura, respectful awe implicit in the architecture. Conversely they (the statues) cast a downward glance upon us, lesser mortals, few, if any of whom, would be deemed worthy of such sculptural dedication.  This asymmetric relationship is perhaps the most contentious issue, in this author’s opinion. Why should we be compelled to look up? Craning one’s neck skyward is not the ideal way to view any artwork, especially when dealing with the additional height of those old regal and military favourites, the mounted equestrian statues. Frankly from this vantage point you might conclude that one stylized representation of a Victorian is much the same as the other (and oddly never too dissimilar to the late Prince Albert).  Whilst the curious amongst us may trouble ourselves to read the plinth plaque (though many are so weather worn as to be illegible) their elevated position compromises comprehension. We simply cannot appreciate, nor begin to truly understand and scrutinize, the work from this position.

Stranger still perhaps is the location of such works, often arranged together in neat, parallel rows or clustered together as in Liverpool’s St John’s Gardens.  Was this an attempt to create an open air pantheon of sorts? Yet as time passes, and we become ever more distant to the reasons why these people were heralded in the first place, the result often feels more like a dusty necropolis, a graveyard of dead luminaries, littering the city, lest the tourists be interested.

If such works now appear to be instructive failures could their continued presence perhaps reveal something more contentious?  Are they not now reminders of a ‘once great past’, a symptom of the wider British malaise, the fetishization of previous times, those fabled ‘good old days’? This fatuous narrative remains a potent deceit, which serves to stymie progress, especially in a city like Liverpool where heritage is pinned as our number one asset. If things were indeed better ‘back then’, we truly are doomed.  In light of the supposed ‘culture wars’ a wider debate is needed to determine the proper place of the past in our national dialogue, and one starting point may be statues and their continued legacy.

Sky Arts, Northern Town and Culture Liverpool chose to redress statues in ways designed to be celebratory or confrontational

Former Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli re-dressed in rainbow colours by artist Daniel Lismore to reflect his conflicted relationship with homosexuality. Photograph by David Edwards, courtesy of Sky Arts.

This author’s, perhaps provocative suggestion is not to remove these works, nor to ‘re-purpose’ them in the latest postmodern fashion by ‘dressing them up’ in colourful clothes, as was seen during the recent Sky Arts ‘Statues Redressed’ programme, but rather to remove them from their plinths and site them at ground level. This way we can encounter these figures more closely as physical equals and as fallible humans, not superior secular gods.

Such an approach is not unprecedented. More recent commissions such as the statues of Sir John and Cecil Moores in Church Street, The ‘Fab Four’ at The Pier Head and those of Sir Ken Dodd and Bessie Braddock at Lime Street Station are all sited at pavement level. Being devoid of plinths it allows us to interrogate their features and to consider them further as real people, rather than simply ‘grandees’. In short, we encounter and experience the statues as figurative artworks, not pieces of sociological propaganda. Divested of their lofty position, we can begin the process of critique from a more nuanced position. After all, the measure of history’s heroes and villains is rarely clear cut. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the ‘Greatest Briton’ according to a BBC poll, was also an incompetent military adventurer (Gallipoli) and violent strike breaker (Gun Boats on the Mersey), who allowed millions to starve in Bengal during the Second World War. The truth is, simple judgements are not always easily arrived at. Life is complex. Besides, if you look at our most popular media tastes today, we tend now to prefer the flawed anti-hero, or loveable rogue over the unsullied but rather boring saints of yesteryear. Heath Ledger’s Joker was a far more compelling character than Christian Bale’s growling Batman. Such dubious figures may be perceived as models for redemption for those of an optimistic streak, or perhaps they remind us that we are all deeply fallible, despite our best efforts. In seeking to bring statues ‘down to our level’, we are effectively humanising them in order to better understand them. That doesn’t mean that we necessarily forgive them their sins, just that we are in a better position to take a view.

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Clockwise starting top left: Stone relief of 2 slave children (St Martins Bank), a petition for its removal attracted approx 2000 signatures; Penny Lane street signs were defaced despite no proven link to slavery; Chained prisoners of war beneath a victorious Admiral Nelson (Exchange Flags), the figures are often mistaken for African slaves; Explorer Christopher Columbus dressed in an African-inspired Elizabethan ruff (Sefton Park Palm House) as part of the Sky Arts project, Statues Redressed. Images courtesy of Jane Anderson

Notwithstanding Lenin’s allegedly prophetic assertion that statues are for pigeons to shit on, commissioning figurative sculptures remains as popular as ever. Is this evidence of their continued cultural significance, or yet another example of a paucity of imagination when faced with the tyranny of ‘tradition’? Is their use so hard wired into our cultural psyche that we have no other alternative but to default to the obligatory statue as the go-to reminders of our latter day worthies? Who knows but at least today the metal and stone pantheon has been somewhat democratized with footballers, comedians, actors and musicians just as likely to get the nod (sometimes with dubious results). This is most probably a good thing as welcome evidence of a more meritocratic society which appreciates and applauds those whose lives and work resonate more with ‘ordinary’ people.  A cynical alternative may be that we just set the bar on achievement too low or are just a bit too quick to judge greatness?

In recent years, it’s not uncommon to see the subject of a statue, still living and breathing, pulling back the curtain on their own likeness. In this way, they get to enjoy all the benefits of exalted, sanctified status, while still being very much of this world. Sometimes however, the public reaction is not what was hoped for, as Fulham Football Club’s hasty removal of their Michael Jackson statue would attest. Dictators such as Saddam Hussein have also lived to see their own sculptures pulled to the ground, while once omnipresent busts of Lenin are now in Russia conspicuous by their absence. This rush to cast a likeness does suggest a certain growing transience in the form – statues turned into short-lived consumables, instead of boasting the forever quality that their form implies.

Devoid of plinths, divested of their lofty position, we encounter and experience the statues as figurative artworks, not pieces of sociological propaganda.

Today’s ‘legends’ are often described as ‘idols’ and idols are naturally associated with worship, venerated to the grave and beyond by their acolytes. The phrase ‘immortalised in stone’ hints at the unspoken pact – you may die but your memory will live on forever. But what happens when all that knew them or knew of them, or who valued their achievements are gone?

And on the pedestal, these words appear; 

‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings; 

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

So wrote, the great romantic poet Percy Shelley in his poem, Ozymandius, about a statue half sunk and very much forgotten in the remote desert sands.

Whilst this may strike some readers as peculiar, cults of adoration pass with time, memories fade and the ‘legends’ supporters pass on themselves. All is forgotten. This leaves us to ponder, what do we do with such ‘relics’ when they no longer matter to anyone still alive? Should we consider them as historical artefacts, totemic symbols of a past creed? Should we dispose of them discreetly, or are they, as I would suggest, worthy of consideration as art objects, as opposed to yet another example of ossified history?

Like sculpture from antiquity, considering them as art, rather than artefact, may engender a more human, civilized response to the ideas of our forebears. Let us not be too judgemental in our critique of how our antecedents perceived their world. No generation has a monopoly on ‘truth’ or ‘virtue’. Let us be free to consider each work as an individual piece, divested of its grandeur and pomp, having been brought back down to earth. 

Ultimately the best thing about the past, like this article, is that it is over.

Ed Williams is an Academic Art Historian who works for TATE Liverpool. He is passionate about all aspects of visual culture and enjoys sharing his knowledge with interested groups.

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Trams-phobia. Time to face our fear of light rail

Prof. Lewis Lesley

Liverpool’s status at the point of embarkation for the first inter-city train journey is well acknowledged and celebrated, but it’s also the case that our city region (or Birkenhead to be more precise) was the location for Britain’s first ever urban tramway in 1860.

Trams continued to be a major means of transit and connectivity across the City Region until the late 1950s. The rise of personalised motor vehicles and the desire of drivers for unimpeded priority over cumbersome fixed-track trams, led to their gradual replacement by diesel buses across the UK and many other countries.

In recent decades there has of course been a growing awareness that ever increasing car use has presented its own set of problems including poor air quality, congestion, fatalities and injuries arising from crashes, not to mention the motor vehicle’s not inconsiderable contribution to global warming. The desire to rebalance cities, reduce congestion and pollution and prioritise sustainable transport modes, has led to a major renewal of interest in trams as a key component in cleaner and more efficient urban transit. Today, Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Nottingham, Edinburgh and Bristol are amongst the cities that either have or are planning to introduce integrated tram networks as part of their urban transport system.

So why not Liverpool? Light Rail systems (trams on tracks) are not only not under active consideration, but they have become a taboo subject never to be whispered in the corridors of power. Why is this the case, and shouldn’t proper consideration be given to the contribution that trams could make to addressing some of our most acute transport and environmental policy challenges?

Let me start by declaring an interest. I am not only an expert advocate for trams, but I played a key role in promoting a tram system for Liverpool between the city centre and John Lennon Airport in the 1990s. The project had a number of notable and attractive features; lightweight trams and track would have been a less intrusive and costly option to the system then being installed with great fanfare in Manchester. But perhaps its most significant component, at least as far as the public decision-makers were concerned was that it was to be delivered and financed entirely by the consortium's lead partner, PowerGen.

The repercussions of the Merseytram fiasco were enough to make trams a toxic subject and a trauma that no local politician ever wanted to revisit.

Private investment in Liverpool has, alas, never been an uncontentious or universally welcomed proposition. The idea that a private company should physically install as well as operate a modern transport system was perhaps ahead of its time, and considered something of an affront to the teams at Merseytravel and Liverpool City Council. Their preferred option was something called the Merseyside Rapid Transit System - effectively guided buses - which was ultimately thrown out by the Secretary of State for Transport. Despite its comparative drawbacks, its status as an approved Merseytravel scheme ensured that our consortium's proposals received less than perfunctory consideration and planning permission was refused. Unlike trams that operate on dedicated track, MRTS would have operated on existing roads, competing for space and priority with other road users. Without dedicated road space and right of way priority even the modern incarnation of "trackless trams,"  with their sleek train-like appearance  - designed to overcome the "trams are sexy, buses are boring perception" - are a poor second best solution. Steel traction always provides a better ride and passenger experience than rubber on tarmac.

Some years passed. By 2005, even Merseytravel had embraced the tram concept.

Fig 1: Merseytram’s proposed 3-line network

A three line network was proposed with routes from Liverpool city centre to Kirkby, Prescot and Whiston and the airport. But the project was doomed to failure and it’s a sorry tale with many twists and turns.  Project costs spiralled amid delays, accusations of poor value for money, arguments over which routes should be prioritised, as well as reported management failures at Merseytravel as outlined in a damning 53-page report by District Auditor, Judy Tench.

Relationships between the transport authority and councils, who were responsible for providing a not insignificant chunk of the now £325m budget for Line One, proved challenging and buy-in was never firmly established. Merseytravel spent £70m on consultancy fees, land acquisition, design, initial engineering and steel for the tracks without ever getting final sign-off from the Treasury. The government watched on as Merseytram morphed from a transport project into a local political football.

Senior management at Merseytravel blamed “rogue officials” at the City Council such as CEO David Henshaw for undermining the project, claiming he was leaking information to the Department for Transport, which chipped away at the government’s confidence.  The City Council saw it another way believing the project was an impertinent and poorly managed imposition on their turf by Merseytravel. In the face of political rows, planning wrangles and the absence of unequivocal local political support, the government’s patience wore out. Despite being granted full planning approval at a Public Inquiry, the prospect of ongoing squabbles between the City Council and Merseytravel, ultimately resulted in the withdrawal of funding by the then Transport Minister, Sadiq Khan.

Merseytravel spent £70m on consultancy fees, land acquisition, design, engineering and steel without ever getting final sign-off from the Treasury. Merseytram had morphed from a transport project into a local political football.

Interestingly, the decision to prioritise the Kirkby route over the more obviously strategic and commercially viable route to Liverpool airport, was one of the reasons why Merseytram lost the crucial support of the City Council in the first place. The Kirkby route scored higher in terms of regeneration and social value attracting higher capital grant support from central government but it came at greater financial risk to the local authorities and they were reluctant to jump in. In the end, the only thing the city had to show for it was substantial debts, embarrassed red faces, and a stack of unnecessary compulsory purchase orders on private property. Sadly, the repercussions of the Merseytram fiasco, including the selling off of the unused steel rails for a third of their original purchase price was enough to make trams a toxic subject and a trauma that no local politician ever wanted to revisit.

In the intervening years, trams have been introduced into other major cities with great success and growing public popularity. Yet Liverpool, burned by its past experiences, has shied away from taking a fresh look at the subject and has avoided initiating any kind of study or research to evaluate the potential benefits or contribution of light rail to the region’s future transport needs.

But can we really allow political embarrassment to preclude consideration of a transport option that in 2005 was recognised as an inherently good idea? As late as 2012 Liverpool Vision’s Strategic Investment Framework (SIF) embraced the need for a direct rapid transit link to Liverpool Airport, which was once again addressed in our 2015 Trampower proposal.

So what are the potential benefits of a tram system for Liverpool City Region and how might it help us to solve some of our most pressing policy challenges?

1.  Trams are clean and green

During the first Covid lockdown, reductions in car traffic realised an enormous and immediate improvement in air quality, but car use is now already back to pre-Covid levels, whilst public transport patronage is only at half its former level. Transport is the main source of toxic air pollution and in a city where more than 60% of all journeys are by car, motor vehicles bear a massive responsibility for the estimated 1,040 annual deaths in the city region arising from bronchial and cardio illnesses attributable to poor air quality. Reducing car use and promoting modal shift towards public transport would make a substantive contribution to improving air quality and ensuring fewer illnesses and deaths.

Similarly, cars are a huge source of CO2 emissions locally and globally. The recent COP26 summit in Glasgow drew up plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050 to avert the worst consequences of global warming. Liverpool City Region has adopted an ambitious Climate Action Plan and aims to be carbon neutral before 2040. This will necessitate a comprehensive reappraisal of transport policies, beyond its current rail investment and bus re-regulation plans, to achieve modal shift and reduce private car use. Whilst electric cars produce no CO2 they do create carcinogenic micro particles from tyres and tarmac. Meanwhile, the effectiveness of their contribution to CO2 reduction depends significantly on how quickly people make the switch from diesel and petrol, which in turn will be influenced by the availability of charging points. So, notwithstanding the environmental benefit of electric cars, they are not going to provide the magic bullet. Promoting modal shift where possible to reduce congestion and pollution should encompass consideration of sustainable transport modes, including trams.

2. People like trams

Where trams have been introduced in other UK cities they have resulted in a significant shift from private car use to public transport with roughly a quarter of users attracted away from their cars. According to a study by the Passenger Transport Executive Group it was estimated that the first wave of tram systems in the UK led to an annual reduction of 22 million car journeys, with more recent studies suggesting this figure is now nearer to 60 million.

Trams are reliable, they run to predictable timetables and are three times more energy efficient than buses. There is also significant evidence that they are perceived as more modern, aspirational and attractive to commuters who would be unwilling to switch to buses. The introduction of the Luas tram system in Dublin was instrumental in ensuring that two thirds of all journeys into the city centre are now via public transport, compared to only a quarter in Liverpool.  Attitudinal studies in Dublin revealed that many tram users from the more affluent suburbs would never contemplate bus use.

A Department for Transport Survey in 2019 showed that tram passengers gave a 90% approval rating, because trams are 90% reliable, as well as 73% always finding space and 70% agreeing tram fares are good value for money.

3. Trams make quicker connections between neighbourhoods and centres of employment

As recognised by the 2015 Liverpool Vision SIF a direct rapid transport link to

Liverpool John Lennon Airport remains a fundamental necessity. We are one of the few UK or major international cities without such a link, and extending the rail connection from South Parkway is neither practicable in terms of land availability nor affordable. Trampower has demonstrated the viability and affordability of a tram link to John Lennon Airport which would also serve key retail and employment sites as well as residential neighbourhoods not currently served by Merseyrail. The detailed scoping and feasibility work undertaken by Trampower envisaged a tram every six minutes, and a journey between the airport and city centre taking about half an hour, with a high level of reliability thanks to traffic-free tram reservations for nearly half the route, and ‘green wave’ priority traffic management for the rest.

Trams and streetcars have also been mooted as a means of improving connectivity to emerging, but currently disconnected employment areas like Liverpool’s Knowledge Quarter and Wirral Waters. Whether these are stand-alone solutions or part of an integrated city region network, the proposals acknowledge the value and popularity of trams as a means of getting large numbers of people from A to B within a dynamic urban environment. With one line operational, additional lines can be added on a marginal cost basis, so strengthening otherwise weak financial cases.

4. Trams are more affordable and cost effective

Whereas extending Merseyrail from South Parkway to the airport may seem like a preferable option, for the volume of passengers involved, it would simply be uneconomic. Despite the Chancellor’s substantial, recent £710m transport grant to the Metro Mayor, there is limited scope to significantly extend metro rail infrastructure across the city region due to its intrinsic cost. As one senior transport practitioner observed, trams cost 10% of a metro rail system and deliver 90% of the benefits. So a tramway could therefore be a cost effective solution, and serve communities along the route very well.  Focusing on the priority route to Liverpool Airport, Trampower identified at least 60 possible routes and combinations, many following old tram lines which utilised the central reservations of boulevards in the south of the city. In addition, there is already space allocated at the Liverpool One bus terminus for trams dating from the failed Merseytram project.

Combining lighter, newer CityClass Mk2 trams with a low profile “no dig – glue in the road” track system would further reduce the cost and time of installation in streets, and provide work for British Steel to roll LR55 rails, saving on imports. LR55 has been in use in Sheffield for over 25 years without needing any maintenance.

5. Trams deliver investment and regeneration

Trams bring investor confidence, as demonstrated in Croydon, Manchester, Nottingham and wherever they have been installed. This means that development is attracted to locations close to tramways, benefiting from the improved quality of service offered with enhanced accessibility and reliability. Research published by Lloyds Bank looking at the effect of tram systems in Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh revealed that house prices rose by 12% compared to average rises in unserved parts of those cities. More generally, trams are seen as a visible sign of investment, ambition and modernity, boosting civic pride and confidence and helping to attract tourism. Manchester’s civic leaders have cited the Metrolink tram system as one of the pivotal investments that transformed perceptions of the city.

In conclusion, trams are clean, green, efficient and affordable. They deliver outputs that are hard to replicate through comparable investment in rail or bus. It’s not the purpose of this article to insist our city region embraces the tram now, but we should be willing to put it in the mix and to evaluate their potential contribution to meeting future transport, regeneration and environmental challenges. It's time for our Metro Mayor to signal a new era, and a willingness to consider ideas and proposals emanating from outside the closed circle of public sector policy makers - still seemingly traumatised by the Merseytram experience. It's time to take another look at trams.

Professor Lewis Lesley is an acknowledged expert in urban public transport. Formerly Professor of Transport Science at Liverpool John Moores University, he is also the author of the Light Rail Developers’ Handbook. As Technical Director at Trampower Ltd, he provides consultancy on the design and development of light rail technology.

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Devolution Derailed: When trust turns to dust

Matt O’Donoghue

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Elected Mayors. Cabinet or Committee. Devolution. Who wants any of it and who really cares? Well, we all do and those who don’t really should. The more say we have over the way we’re governed, and the way we raise and spend our taxes, the better. But what good is having an opinion about how your city or region is run, if your voice is only listened to but never heard?

A proper referendum – not a ‘consultation’ on just the Mayoral Model – but one that gives the citizens a real choice in how they are governed is what the political nihilists of Liverpool need. Encourage them to step away from the edge, to stop blaming the Tories and their Commissioners, or Joe Anderson and his cronies, and let the people take control of their future.

The current debate over an elected Mayor for Liverpool, and who should have the final say, has more than the malodorous whiff of déjà vu. We could have hot-wired the flux capacitor and jumped into the Doc’s DeLorean to step back to the future of the Cunard’s Council Chambers circa 2012 and barely noticed the difference.  Many of the same faces are there. Just as Joe’s army of acolytes did, back when he was Labour Leader of the ruling party, so Joanne Anderson and today’s elected members appear to have snatched the option to choose how their city will be governed from the fingers of its citizens. The best you can say is that it took the current Mayor until January 26th - that’s ten months - to break her manifesto pledge and her media promises for a referendum.

Accusations of ‘betrayal’ and ‘u-turn’ by Mayor Joanne Anderson on this issue, however true they may be, are as pointless as the consultation that her passed amendment is likely to deliver. The binary ‘yes’ or ‘no’ choice that the citizens are likely to get is an exercise that’s estimated to cost £120,000 and will not be legally binding. It serves to appease and to distract. At its core this is about far more than whether to elect a City Mayor. This is about popular engagement and allowing the people to finally have their say over how their city is run; Mayor with a Cabinet, Cabinet and Leader, or Leader and Committee. And it obviously scares them to give the people a choice because our councillors appear to be doing everything they can to make sure this doesn’t happen. Again.

Amid smokescreen-claims that the estimated costs of any full referendum would be £450,000, the Mayor’s post-election pledge that she could be trusted to deliver a legally binding vote have been turned to ashes. As one council insider put it;

“She really should have looked under the bonnet before she promised to put the car back on the road.”

But the importance of a push towards a re-engagement with politics and how the Liverpool City Region’s capital is governed cannot be underestimated. The people of Liverpool deserve this much after being taken for granted, and for fools for so many years. Trust has not just been lost, it’s been shat on and flushed into the river. Never have the people of Liverpool felt more disillusioned with - and more distanced from - those they elect.

When Manchester voters were handed their referendum they chose to reject Mayoral and Cabinet governance and to stick with the Committee system, led until recently by Labour’s Sir Richard Leese. In this city, Labour holds 94 of the 96 seats. Of course, we still ended up with the ‘King of The North’, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham imposed upon us from above. But in terms of the city authority, we never missed what we never had, a spare Mayor to push the city’s interests. But at least we had our say through a referendum and the people were engaged with the political process. They said ‘no’ in a way that had to heard.

Trust has not just been lost, it’s been shat on and flushed into the river.

When it came to Greater Manchester’s Mayor, like Liverpool, the toy came without instructions. Our two great cities and our regions were political petri dishes. This was Call-Me-Dave Cameron’s experiment in devolved democracy and we just had to get on with things as best we could. But both experiments have had disastrous consequences because transparency and accountability have become an ‘inconvenience’ in the dash towards devolution. I spent the last decade as a journalist exposing the effects of these slippery standards in integrity and investigating the statutory failures of governance and oversight that got us here, in Liverpool and Greater Manchester.

In Greater Manchester, the Mayor was handed the Policing and Crime Commissioner’s duties. Where once we had a monthly Police Committee made up from elected members with statutory powers of oversight and audit responsibilities over the country’s second largest constabulary, now we have Baroness Beverley Hughes who was appointed by Andy Burnham. Oversight has slipped and with it transparency, leaving the Fourth Estate (the media) and its journalists to hold the police to account for their failings and to expose the devastating effects on individuals. 

Perhaps Greater Manchester Police was too complicated or contentious for the new office to deal with? Whatever the reasons, we now have a new computer control system that’s possibly £80 million over budget - we can’t find out for sure because the Mayor’s office has refused to answer the Freedom of Information requests - and it still doesn’t work more than two years after it was switched on. It’s likely that the Integrated Police Operational System - or iOPS - will soon be binned. Tens of thousands of victims have not received justice because their crimes have been ‘lost’ and tens of millions that should have been spent on front line policing has been blown on consultants and a computer that says ‘no’. What’s certain is that the Police Committee, whose meetings I used to attend, would have publicly asked the questions of the Chief Constable that could have halted this slow-motion car-crash and this disaster may have been averted before the damage was done. Instead, we had complicit cronies of the Chief who covered up his failings. Those who should have held him to account either didn’t see, or chose to look the other way. Sounds familiar?!

One telling difference between our two regions is the excellent job that The Manchester Evening News and the fearless Jennifer Williams did to investigate and hold authorities to account. If only The Liverpool Echo had been so diligent, rather than acting as if they were a branch of Joe Anderson’s official communications team for so many years, perhaps then the rocks would have been turned over much earlier.

Despite continual warnings from whistleblowers and the stories from those brave journalists who fought to give voice to their claims of cronyism and coverup, it took two years for the ‘King’ to kick his Chief Constable to the kerb. This only happened after an investigation by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies which exposed all the truths that we had broadcast and published. Finally, GMP was placed into ‘enhanced special measures’. This was the first time a police force had been found out to be operating so poorly. Andy Burnham’s nose was rubbed in it by authorities higher than himself, before he admitted that he could smell the stench and cleared the air. The best you can say is that Andy Burnham’s wilful ignorance was born of his desire to be liked and to avoid conflict - little comfort for the countless victims of rape or assault who never saw an officer because his computer kept crashing, meaning the crime was never investigated. Even so, ‘The King’ was re-elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote.

Transparency and accountability have become an ‘inconvenience’ in the dash towards devolution.

Look to Liverpool and we see a familiar pattern; an overwhelming political majority for Labour and an elected Mayor with the powers that were once held by Committee members, now in the hands of one person. The similar failings in oversight, transparency and accountability that allowed Greater Manchester Police to spiral out of control, and the same lack of integrity in those elected to serve our best interests, have brought Liverpool to the brink of financial ruin and political shame. This complete failure of the devolution experiment and the democratic governance that was supposed to hold the Mayor to account has delivered - ‘The Commissioners’, plus a former Mayor and his officers who are ‘released under investigation’, and a financial black hole the auditors say gets bigger by the day.  But please don’t let them use this to fool you into thinking ‘Mayor-Bad’, ‘Leader-Good’.

The shift to elected Mayor delivered the adoption of the “Cabinet Model” of Governance creating new Committees for Regeneration, Communities, Education and more besides. These Cabinets are chaired by Leads who sit with their members, to consider and vote on the issues before them. As their reward, all Lead Members receive a top-up, or ‘Special Responsibility Allowance’ of around £13,000 on top of the £10,500 they receive as a councillor. And they are appointed by the Mayor. 

The power of patronage means it pays well to stay close to “Big Joe” and “Joanne”. Under this style of constitution the idea of “delegated responsibility”, that always existed, is focused on the Mayor and their Cabinet Leads. They can choose to vest the authority they have to approve matters under consideration into the hands of Departmental Directors. In theory, this should make the resolution of difficult matters much quicker. For example, urgent business deals can be dealt with before they collapse. In practice, it has meant schemes like the Tarmacademy were railroaded through council without the proper scrutiny.

By a deft sleight of hand and before the end of 2015, the only two committees that were asking difficult questions about policies and performance - The Mayoral Select Committee, and The Overview and Scrutiny Committee, were ‘disappeared’. Mayor Joe Anderson left oversight and transparency in his wake with barely a look over his shoulder.  Even so, in 2016 the voters of Liverpool still returned Mayor Joe for a second term on a reduced majority of 52%. But inside the Labour Party mutiny loomed on the horizon.

On the eve of the 2019 local elections, Joe Anderson’s own former Deputy Mayor, Anne O’Byrne, wrote her mutinous clarion call for rebellion and change.  Under the flag, “Why Liverpool needs to return to a Leader and Cabinet Model”, she posted her assault on a system in which she had once been key.

“We’ve done a lot of things well (since we swept to power in 2010), however over the past few years the whole of the city has seen the problems of the Mayoral model being too centralised, adopting a Presidential style of decision making.”

Councillor O’Byrne continued her Trumpian-takedown of the way her boss did business.

“The current mayoral model insulates the Mayor from criticism.  A Mayor does not hold surgeries, report regularly to the Labour Party branch and does not represent a ward that would ground them in the issues people raise on a daily basis.” 

The mayoral structure, according to his one-time deputy, insulated him in an ivory tower and away from all the problems and concerns of his councillors and the electorate who voted for him.

In doing away with the position of Leader of the Council and in concentrating all power in the hands of an elected Mayor, Joe Anderson may have hoped the new system would be more dynamic, with faster decision making.  He was to be the boss and his close-knit ‘gang’ would get the job done. But while listening to and communicating with councillors and communities may take a bit more time, Councillor O’Byrne wryly remarked, “It means you make better decisions for everybody and not just a selected few.”

As the electorate of Liverpool prepared to cast their 2019 votes, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party saved her most devastating lines for last;

One telling difference between our regions is the excellent job that The Manchester Evening News did to hold authorities to account. If only The Liverpool Echo had been so diligent.

“The Mayoral model lends itself to meetings with developers, investors, Whitehall mandarins and Tory ministers in order to have a top down approach to developing the city.  The people of the city have no role other than voting for the Mayor once every four years.  The rest of the time they are seen as obstacles to development, not integral to the process of inclusive growth.”

Councillor O’Byrne’s depth charge was still making waves as the Labour Councillor for Knotty Ash, Harry Doyle, looked forward to working with and speaking up for his residents. In a ward once famous as the home of the comedian Ken Dodd, Councillor Doyle was more likely to be concerned with the community legacy of Liverpool Football Club’s former training ground, Melwood, than looking for a fight with the man now known as ‘Big Joe’. 

Yet less than a week after the count, a leaked email chain exposed Councillor Doyle’s true feelings about his life inside Liverpool Council. “During my induction day last year, a council officer advised new councillors that 95% of decisions are made by the Mayor,” he wrote. “This is a figure that baffled me as it made me wonder what role we backbenchers have to play in policy formation.”  In his leaked emails, Doyle echoes the sentiments of the former Deputy Mayor, from her night-of-the-election tweet. He wrote “It centres all of our decision-making around one person, and some decisions are not made clear to us until they’re made clear to the public via the press.”

Is it any wonder that the people who’ve watched their city carved up and sold off on the cheap have begun to abandon hope for change and trust in those they elected to deliver a better life? ‘They’re in it for themselves’ or ‘they can’t do a thing’ becomes ‘my vote makes no difference’ and soon gives way to ‘what do I care?’. And once that wall is built between the people and their politicians and it becomes unscalable, who will rise up to knock it down? The Infidels? Militant? Extreme disaffection can feed extreme politics. Councillors, be careful what you vote for.

As a proud woolly-backed Lancastrian and adopted Mancunian, married into Old Swan heritage, I believe the affairs of both cities bookending the western stretch of the M62 are important to our mutual understanding and growth. Only those who’ve breathed life in the Liverpool City Region or in Greater Manchester can truly begin to know what’s going on here, and what needs to be done in the best interests of the people whose lives and jobs reside here. Well, that assumes the people in charge actually have the best interests of their electorate held closest to their hearts… rather than their own careers, or those of the businesses and individuals of influence who drip poison in their ears.

From Corbett and Conception, to Kemp and Crone; the elected representatives of Liverpool still have the chance to unite. Mayor Joanne Anderson, must jump down from that conveniently climbed fence and make a difference for those citizens who feel their trust has been misplaced. It is they who must shoulder much of the blame for what has passed and the political embarrassment that Liverpool became. Their wards elected them to serve, and instead they passed motions that concentrated powers and blinkered oversight. They cancelled the Committees that created accountability, and set up Cabinets led by cronies. And when their constituents came with complaints about the scam developments blighting their neighbourhoods, or the Cabinets rubber stamped back-door-disposals of the city’s Crown Jewels, they found they were powerless to stop things, or too late to change them. Now is their chance to consult, to listen to those voices calling for respect.

The practice and custom of a one-size-fits-all set of policies that are dictated from a Westminster and London-centric government just doesn’t work for any of us any more. Our regions are individual and different and only a federation working together and towards the common national good can be the right way to go. This country’s regions have their own characteristics, their own needs and their own strengths. You can’t properly understand a place unless you’ve lived, loved and listened to its citizens. And heard what they have to say. To deny a ‘proper’ referendum – in favour of some ‘Mayoral Choice’ - is so much more than a sacrifice of the alternative. In a city where the councillors barely have a grip on costs, let alone appreciate values, what price to encourage engagement with ‘democracy’ and to deliver on a promise?

Matt O’Donoghue is an investigative reporter who has worked for the BBC and ITV including Granada Reports and Newsnight. He is a previous winner of the O2 Broadcast Journalist of the Year, ITV Correspondent of the Year and has won numerous awards from the Royal Television Society.

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