Candidacy may be won, but no love lost
AFTER a characteristically bitter fight between old enemies Peter Kilfoyle and Jane Kennedy, the battle for who will be Labour's candidate to be police commissioner has been won.
Ms Kennedy has been chosen as the party's great hope for the campaign, and given Labour's huge footprint covering most of Merseyside's political landscape, it's highly likely that she will win the £85,000 a year job at the November elections.
Mr Brocklebank attended yesterday's launch at the St John's shopping centre 'Cop Shop', at which various rosy-cheeked Labour hangers on were busy filling red balloons with helium and congratulating themselves on how they 'had won'.
Among this number was, of course, Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson, who is obviously overjoyed that Jane, not Mr Kilfoyle, is likely to be in charge of policing on Merseyside. It is, after all, well known that Messrs Anderson and Kilfoyle are not each other's biggest fans.
To a question from ex-Post columnist Jim Hancock about whether he would be there celebrating had the former Walton MP won the nomination, Mayor Anderson, through a grin, responded "We'll never know now".
Given his recent letter to all local party members urging them to vote for Ms Kennedy because he wanted a police commissioner he could work with who would be "accountable to the Labour Party" (some suggest he may have meant "accountable to me"), Mr B suspects the answer to the question of whether he would be there standing shoulder to shoulder with Mr Kilfoyle would have been a resounding "no".
Certainly, as Mr B understands, there is little doubt about whether Mr Kilfoyle would have wanted Uncle Joe by his side, should things have turned out differently.
IF Mr B had asked 60s pop group the Kinks who the MP for St Helens North would be in 2012, the answer would probably have been Da-Da-Da-Da-Da-
David Watts.
And they would have been correct, although Mr B has learnt that among Mr Watts' regional parliamentary colleagues, he is known affectionately as "Curly" - in a nod to the former Coronation Street binman of the same surname.
Mr B has also learned that one of Peter Kilfoyle's backers for the police commissioner role, Tom Watson MP - the "scourge of News International" who has risen to celebrity status through his pursuit of the Murdoch empire - has also acquired a new moniker recently, that being "Tommy Two Dinners".
So Mr B is told, the nickname apparently owes to Mr Watson's agreeableness to dining out on his new-found fame.
Or, as one of Mr B's political colleagues remarked this week following the news Mr Watson's had won a prestigious political award, "Now he's won Total Politics' MP of the Year award, it probably should be Tommy Ten Dinners from now on."
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David Bartlett
City editor of the Post and Echo covering politics, regeneration, and urban affairs.
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In your piece on Jane Kennedy you refer to police authorities as being made up of "representatives of local authorities and organisations involved in the criminal justice system". This is not the case the 17 members of the Police Authority are constituted as 9 elected local authority members and 8 independent members. The independent members are chosen by interview after an open advert in newspapers including your own. The independents sit for a four year term and come from a varity of backgrounds One of the independents will always be a magistrate.
I hope that Post and other media will cover the campaign and election of the new commissioner whoever that may be,extensively and accurately. I would sincerely wish that there be a large turn out for what will be an important and difficult post requiring an able candidate with a strong mandate from the public.
I and my colleagues have served on the merseyside Police Authority through a period where crime and anti social behaviour has declined. On the day of your published interview the Chief Inspector of Constabulary Sir Denis O Conner stated that Merseyside was the best force in the country in terms of satisfaction with handling of ASB. We all want a police Service on Merseyside that has the confidence of it's communities and that people in their turn feel safe.