The row between Luciana Berger MP and Jake Morrison appears to have woken up Liverpool's political scene with a jolt.

With the Liberal Democrats in retreat, Labour had managed until now to keep a lid on its internal rows.

My phone was red hot last night with text messages from Lib Dems and Labour insiders.

Finally the Liberal Democrats have got something to smile about. You know it's bad when even former leader Warren Bradley is sticking the boot in on Twitter.

Meanwhile Jake Morrison's Facebook post that blew the lid on the row now has 42 comments and counting.

There is quite a bit of talk of late, suggesting that Labour Party leadership should conduct behind-the-scenes talks with the Liberal Democrats about the possibility of having a coalition Government with them post-2015.

Frankly - I think a coalition between the Labour Party and the Lib Dems would be a travesty.

Another five year coalition may keep the media and political heavyweights excited, but the public do not have faith or trust in politicians as it is.

You probably missed this gem of a tweet from an account purporting to be from former Liverpool council leader Warren Bradley to current Lib Dem leader Richard Kemp.

He has however been quick to deny any involvement, which followed the defection of Rosie Jolly from the Lib Dems to Labour.

Her defection sparked an angry email from Cllr Kemp in which said her efforts had been "below what we expect of a Lib Dem councillor".

The user of twitter account @wazza23666 sent Cllr Kemp a message which stated: "you're a complete t*****, your quotes regarding Rosie just about sums you up. Once a d*** always a d***.......

It wouldn't be a year on Liverpool council without another defection.

Rosie Jolly is the latest to jump ship from the Liberal Democrats to Labour. It was hardly a surprise and indeed I predicted it in March.

It's always fun to see the emails that are sent between the defector and the party they are leaving, here they are:

So what exactly does consultation mean? It is a much used word by councils when changes are being made to a service or a planning development is proposed.

Liverpool's opposition Liberal Democrat leader Richard Kemp is currently engaged in a battle with the council over its budget booklet that is being distributed to city households.

He's taken issue with the section on plans to introduce a fortnightly bin collection service to 136,000 non-terraced houses.

The booklet is unequivocal in stating that the changes are on their way.

My previous post on the result of the November 2012 Merseyside Police and Crime Commissioner election included a pie chart showing how the number of registered electors who 'abstained' vastly outnumbered those who took part.

I've now updated this graphic so that it includes an estimate for the total number of eligible, but unregistered, electors in Merseyside. It looks like this:

I've posted two graphs below, both of which I circulated on twitter earlier today, shortly after the Police and Crime Commissioner results for Merseyside were announced.

The first is a simple bar chart, showing the number of votes for each candidate. As any reader of this blog probably knows already, the Labour candidate Jane Kennedy won by a huge margin, securing 56% of the first preference votes.

It was in May, following disappointing turnouts in the English local elections, that I was first asked to predict how low turnout might be in today's Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) ballots. I've been asked many times since, always confident to predict that less than one-third of registered electors will cast a ballot. The Electoral Reform Society has predicted that overall turnout will be less than 20%, and I wouldn't bet against that possibility.

Scanning comments on twitter this morning, there were plenty of reports of empty polling stations (see my twitter feed for examples). There were also plenty of people indicating their intention to spoil their ballot, as a protest against the whole idea of elected PCCs, and urging others to do the same.

For months now, the lack of enthusiasm about the impending PCC elections has reminded me of the scenes in Jose Saramago's (2007) novel 'Seeing'. Having returned from an empty polling station myself earlier today, I couldn't resist re-reading the first few chapters.

In May 2009, as leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg announced his 100 day action plan 'to save British democracy', 'take back power' and 'change politics for good'. Clegg's proposals were for an urgent and far-reaching set of political reforms, including fixed-term Parliaments, a mechanism for voters to be able to recall MPs, a referendum on adopting the 'AV+' electoral system, an elected second chamber, and a cap on donations to political parties.

Clegg's call to arms was prompted by the MPs' expenses crisis, as a result of which the leaders of all three major parties came to proclaim that British democracy was in crisis and in urgent need of reform. Against this backdrop, he explained the rationale for swift and radical action in the following terms:

"Britain's democracy is at a turning point. Not in living memory has confidence in politicians, trust in the system, or faith in the government's capacity to change things been as low as it is today. Now the true extent of the rot in the system is clear to people, there is huge and growing public demand for change. This has become a once in a generation chance to reform politics completely, putting power back into the hands of the people, where it belongs. The need for constitutional renewal is now recognised across the political spectrum".

Liverpool Liberal Democrat leader Richard Kemp believes Paula Keaveney is the party's perfect candidate for police and crime commissioner

As revealed on DSA earlier today Keaveney is set to be selected as the party's candidate.