Liverpool council election 2011 - the aftermath of the Liberal Democrat meltdown
Remember the names Richard Kemp and Barbara Mace. They are the only two Liberal Democrats who clung on to their seats in Liverpool last night.
Labour now have more than a third of the 90 seats and the Lib Dems are down to 23 (if you include suspended former party leader Warren Bradley).
The Lib Dems lost 11 seats last night. The biggest scalps were those of former council leader Mike Storey and ex-education supremo Paul Clein.
It is worth pointing out that Warren Bradley predicted this last summer in an email that was leaked to me and then made national headlines.
Many scoffed at him, but here we are he was proven right.
Last night many Lib Dems were simply shell schocked. In fact I could run out of words in an attempt to describe the meltdown.
Instead consider this. Mike Storey, Lord Storey was the architect of the regenerated Liverpool we now have today.
He has been widely lauded for helping turn around the image of the city. He helped bring the European Capital of Culture, Liverpool One was devised under this leadership. Yet last night he was dumped out by the electorate. He polled just 1,444 votes compared to the 2,347 that Labour's 18-year-old candidate Jake Morrison.
There is a symmetry to the defeat as Cllr Morrison becomes the youngest councillor in Liverpool in the same way that Lord Storey was back in 1973 when he was elected at the age of 21.
Lord Storey is said to be fairly sanguine about the result adopting a 'well that's politics' attitude.
In 1998 he took control of the council in similar circumstances inflicting a huge defeat on Labour, so he has seen both sides of political landslides.
Wavertree was once considered a safe Lib Dem seat. Safe Lib Dem seats no longer exist in Liverpool. Labour has never won in Childwall yet last night it won the seat with a majority of 1,200 votes.
Moving on to Paul Clein. Widely regarded as a very good councillor and respected by Labour, he too was shown no mercy by the Greenbank electorate. He is a loss to the council and politics in Liverpool, but that is what happens on nights like last night.
So where do the Lib Dems go from here?
Firstly they have the task of electing a new leader. After last night's result it looks increasingly likely that it will be Paula Keaveney.
Nothing is certain of course, but that is why the smart money is at the moment.
If she wins she will have the task of motivating a demoralised team, not easy. Then the party needs to concentrate on doing a good job in opposition. Labour had a long honeymoon in Liverpool since taking control last May. Add to that the unpopularity of the coalition government and you see things like last night happening.
But the Lib Dems need to get better and smarter at opposition. They spent too long getting used to being in opposition and need to start trying to land some blows on Labour, no easy task in the current landscape.
Having a such a huge majority will also bring problems for Labour. Party discipline may start to suffer now. Council leader Joe Anderson has the task of keeping all 62 councillors happy. He doesn't have enough jobs to hand out to keep them all sweet.
The question remains though whether last night will mark a high watermark of Labour dominance in Liverpool or whether we could see a repeat next year. If that happens the Lib Dems would be down to the low 10s in seat numbers.
As it stands today the Lib Dems are a skeleton of that once powerful election winning machine that held Liverpool up as its flagship council.
UPDATE: Richard Kemp is being touted as the possible leadership favourite. I may have jumped the gun this morning. He has ruled himself out, so it looks like it will be a straight run between Flo Clucas and Paula Keaveney.
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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The bigger shock for me is the scale of some of the gains. Labour got 4 or 5 times as many votes as the Lib Dems in some previously Lib Dem held seats. Thats a huge swing
The massive swing reflects enormous anger with the coalition government, and the increasing ineptitude of the local LibDems, when in power.
I hope Labour do not think this means they have a mandate to indulge in grandstanding opposition to the government, on the national stage. They don't.
I want to see them focussing on what they were actually elected to do, which is running the council properly. Don't give ammunition to prejudiced idiots who are dying for an opportunity to slag us off all over again. Save all the antigovernment rhetoric and gestures for the next Westminster election.
Good point, Katie. But I think there is no prospect whatsoever of an enlarged Labour group wandering back to the lunatic fringe. Labour in Liverpool has learned its lesson properly. It took several spankings from the electorate before the message sank in. But sank in, it has. There are plenty of very able, well-balanced and intelligent people among the new intake, including several women.
As for the Lib Dems, we are merely climbing the foothills of their disaster. 50% of all their remaining seats are up next year. If the same thing were to happen again, they would be reduced to 13 seats among which the best-known would be the appalling Sharon Green. She would battle Tom Morrison for the leadership - the rest are non-entities.
So 2012 is an utterly crucial year for the Lib Dems in Liverpool. Three of their prospective leaders (Clucas, Keaveney & Eddie Clein) are up for re-election; and one ex-leader (Bradley) if he hasn't been expelled or jailed by then. All would have been defeated last night. As things stand, the Lib Dems can concede County, Knotty Ash & West Derby now (cheerio Fielding, Irving & Hulme). They will likely lose Allerton, Childwall & Greenbank as well (bye bye Clucas, Eddie Clein & Jan Clein). It's impossible to see Bradley surviving in Wavertree, although a fresh candidate might. That leaves Paula Keaveney biting her nails in Cressingtonple of nonentities in MH & Woolton.
So I predict Paula Keaveney will NOT stand for the Lib Dem leadership. She will focus on holding her seat. Moreover, she will focus on holding her job at Edge Hill Uni where Coalition cuts to HE have chopped 97% off its public funding. I doubt anyone will stand in fact. Why would they when they would inherit a defeated Party further divided by a rampaging Richard Kemp with time on his hands? So Kemp will win unopposed. And then the defections will flow.
If you're right, Ronnie (and I imagine you are) that's a great relief. I don't know anything about the new intake, and look forward to seeing how they do.
What I really would like to see is the leader and cabinet establishing more effective control over officers - exercising their power properly and taking more responsibility for governance.
I know this bores the pants off people, but it really is important, because at the moment the the balance is wrong.
The media constantly compares the chief executives of local authorities with the prime minister. It's a totally false and misleading comparison, Ged Fitzgerald is the equivalent of the head of the civil service, it is Anderson who is "our" equivalent of Cameron.
Get this wrong and you have the officer tail seemed to be wagging the political dog. This certainly was the impression the Bradley regime gave - he always seemed to be up for sound bites and photo-ops, with a bit of pork-barrel patronage thrown in, rather than actually getting on top of his brief.
The current Labour administration has made a good start, and hopefully will now have the confidence to make some real changes.
Ronnie - Sharon has just defected to sit with Warren as an Ind Group.
Thanks, CCR, I saw it. She can fight Warren for the leadership of the Lawbreakers Party then
Why are so many people of the same family are allowed to stand as councillors and indeed be elected to the council? I don't see how this can be healthy for politics in Liverpool.
It can't be right for one family to have that much power in one City? Blood is thicker than water after all.
Also how did an 18 year old become a candidate?
I bet a lot of people who voted Labour didn't realise he was a kid.
Liverpool is supposed to be a major international city and someone with no life experience is allowed to make decisions affecting us all.
Michael - yes, it is odd that there's so many Cleins, Kemps, Andersons. I'm told 1 in 3 City Cllrs were related a couple of years ago!
I can assure Michael Jones that we all knew the candidate was 18, as it was the main focus of Mike Storey's campaign!