The fight for Wavertree hots up: investigation into Colin Eldridge's girlfriend's job
The race for the Wavertree parliamentary seat just got a little bit more interesting today.
Wannabe MP Lib Dem Colin Eldridge is in the firing line after his girlfriend Laura Gilmore was given a ã30,000 a year job in the executive members' office.
No one else was interviewed for the temporary post.
For the full details click HERE to read my colleague Marc Waddington's report.
I'm not going to get into the rights and wrongs of this one, but undoubtedly this will be used against him in his campaign against sitting Labour MP and former minister Jane Kennedy.
His campaign was based on being different and a "clean" candidate, not the old guard as he was trying to portray Mrs Kennedy.
One of his recent newsletters berates Mrs Kennedy for "employing her boyfriend on expenses". Click HERE for the details on this story.
If it is proved that the Liberal Democrats were involved in the appointment and rules were broken then it will be even more bad news for Eldridge who is also a councillor for Church.
But even if the appointment of Cllr Eldridge's girlfriend to a post at the council was entirely above board and secured on merit, this could will be an important lesson to the parliamentary hopeful.
One would expect he and the eminently qualified Miss Gilmore - a seasoned political campaigner - would at least have had a conversation prior to her getting the job about the way the opposition Labour group could use this situation to their own advantage?
Given Cllr Eldridge's lambasting of his Wavertree rival Jane Kennedy MP for employing her partner at the taxpayers' expense, Labour leaflets will no doubt be flooding his prospective ward in the coming days.
In the meantime if you would like to know more about Laura Gilmore, she is known as LibDemLaura on social networking site Twitter.
Thanks to LibDemLaura we now know some mildly amusing anecdotes about Cllr Eldridge, for example he does not like small towels:
"just used both big towels in the hotel by accident. Colin is going mad & has 2 dry himself on nothing short of a flannel!"
One suspects it will take more than a flannell to mop this story up.
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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David says: it will take more than a flannel to mop this story up. But 'flannel' is exactly what we can expect from Colin Eldridge. So come on, Streetwise, let's hear it from you. It's just what the Militant used to do. What's your explanation for imitating their corruption? Put Laura up instead if you'd prefer. She likes to twitter - unless the sight of you rubbing yourself with a hand towel has rendered her speechless. First rule of politics, by the way: avoid providing people with barn doors to aim at. Second rule: you will be held to account.
This had nothing to do with me. (Or the Leader). Honest.