Posts Tagged ‘Merseyside’

Labour’s metro mayors will have to be the next best thing to governing

06/08/2016, 10:21:52 PM

As the Labour leadership race gathers pace, another party selection process enters its final week.

Labour members in Merseyside, Greater Manchester and a big chunk of the West Midlands are choosing candidates to fight next May’s first-ever ‘metro mayor’ elections.

These powerful new roles will create a cadre of directly-elected civic leaders, with direct personal mandates, who will take charge of economic development, strategic planning and transport in their areas. The Greater Manchester package also includes the £6 billon health and social care budget for the city-region.

Given the three conurbations are each strongly Labour, the party’s selection process will, in all likelihood, choose who becomes the eventual mayor in each area.

In Merseyside, the contest is a race between Liverpool’s directly-elected city mayor, Joe Anderson, and Liverpool Walton MP (and Jeremy Corbyn’s parliamentary private secretary) Steve Rotheram. Anderson, a powerhouse local government veteran who is well-regarded in Whitehall, is pitching himself as the candidate with a clear plan and a record of delivery and job creation.

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Merseyside row overshadows Combined Authority launch

03/04/2014, 04:10:25 PM

Word reaches us of a serious family squabble on Merseyside.

This issue of contention is over who should chair Merseyside’s new Combined Authority -designed to pool responsibility among local councils over transport, economic development and regeneration and receive new powers from Whitehall.

Liverpool is clear it should be Mayor Joe Anderson. Most of the other councils disagree, citing the example of Greater Manchester, where Wigan’s council leader rather than Manchester’s chairs the body, avoiding the impression of Mancunian dominance.

Matters came to a head on Monday at a meeting of the six Merseyside leaders representing Liverpool, Sefton, Knowsley, Wirral, Halton and St Helens. With rumours that Anderson and Sefton’s leader, Peter Dowd, were boycotting the meeting in protest at the job not going to Anderson, a vote was taken by the remaining leaders and Wirral Council Leader Phil Davies was duly appointed.

Anderson and Dowd then turned up after the vote had been taken. The mood, say insiders, was sub-Arctic.

There are two structural problems being played out here. First, there has long been a debate about what exactly constitutes ‘Merseyside’. Scousers argue that it’s really nothing more than Liverpool plus satellite areas and therefore it makes sense to play their strongest card.

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When is a local candidate not a local candidate?

07/02/2014, 03:35:46 PM

The race to succeed Shaun Woodward as Labour MP for St. Helens South and Whiston is rapidly hotting up, following the decision of the NEC to designate the seat as an all-women shortlist last month.

Candidates are starting to emerge for the plum Labour seat, vying for the chance to inherit Woodward’s 9,309 majority.

But carpetbaggers should beware. A poll in yesterday’s St Helens Star found 74% of readers wanted a candidate with‘strong St. Helens ties.’

Step forward two contrasting ‘local’ candidates.

The first is former Labour council leader Marie Rimmer, who has dominated public life in the town for thirty years. At 66, she is the grand dame of Merseyside Labour politics, but is said to be “energised” by the prospect of running for Parliament.

Although ousted as council leader last year she remains, in the words of local Police Commissioner (and former Labour minister) Jane Kennedy, “one of the most important and influential women on Merseyside and a source of inspiration to me.”

The second ‘local’ is Catherine McDonald, a St. Helens-born former special adviser to employment minister Jim Knight, who is now Southwark Council’s cabinet member in charge of health and social care.

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