Liverpool Labour: 'We can only dread what will come next'

A SECOND term of the so-called ConDem coalition would have been seen as a frightening prospect for Liverpool’s future.

Turn that into a majority Tory Government and it becomes the proverbial Nightmare on Dale Street for a council that is red through and through.

Veteran city councillor and Labour chief whip Alan Dean summed it up as he braved the drizzling rain this afternoon outside the local count at Wavertree Tennis Centre.

“When you look at what Liverpool has suffered under the Coalition, we can only dread what will come next.”

It was a grim prospect echoed by one-time deputy mayor Paul Brant who won a town hall seat in Fazakerley to make his political comeback.

Over the water, cheers rang out among Labour faithful as Esther McVey, who had described herself as a "compassionate Merseyside Conservative", was dispatched by former Liverpool teacher Margaret Greenwood in Wirral West.

Next door, in Wirral South, Alison McGovern, granddaughter of In My Liverpool Home writer Peter McGovern, increased her majority for Labour.

It was, after all, Esther McVey and her boss IDS who had inflicted misery on thousands of individuals in Merseyside and beyond with their so-called welfare reforms including cuts to disability benefits and the hated bedroom tax.

Should Liverpool raise the white flag over the Town Hall and surrender, and offer to work 'under' a Conservative government?

But while the Liverpool-born former television presenter - and potential contender for Tory leader - may have exited stage right, the Tories were busy rallying the troops in true-blue Middle England.

Cameron has already spoken of making £12 billion savings with more welfare "reforms", and that pledge was made when everyone was under the impression that there would be a junior coalition partner in the Government to keep him in check.

As McVey was, perhaps, licking her wounds, Cameron returned triumphantly to 10 Downing Street, footloose and fancy free, no need to have a little word with Nick Clegg or anybody else prior to inflicting his spending cuts on the people of the nation.

Political analysts will spend days, if not weeks, picking over the bones of a political graveyard that includes not only McVey, but Ed Balls, Danny Alexander, Vince Cable and others to find out what went wrong, or right.

Some Labour MPs may now even have the guts to publicly admit Ed Miliband was never going to take them on the road to Downing Street.

Offski

As Prof Jon Tonge, of the University of Liverpool, said this afternoon: “As much as many people dislike personality politics Ed Miliband was not seen as prime ministerial.”

Will the new hot favourite, Liverpool-born working class hero Andy Burnham, fare any better?

Add to the scary, bogeymen scenario, painted by Cameron, of a Miliband-Sturgeon pact running the country – and quaking middle Englanders are lining up to be protected by the Tories.

Once two-party politics, red and blue, ruled Britannia’s political waves. Today the combined forces of the Lib Dems, the Greens, UKIP, the SNP, Plaid Cymru, the Northern Ireland parties and those referred to as “the rest” are not great enough to halt the Conservative juggernaut.

Expect cuts, cuts and more cuts, expect more welfare reforms and austerity measures, with Cameron able and eager, to drive through his war on spending.

Yet his party only has a small minority, says Prof Tonge pointing to a rocky road ahead.

No problem. Watch the Tories roll out a boundaries shake-up and a cut in the number of MPs.  There will be no Lib Dems to apply the brakes, and such a review will favour a long lease on Number 10 going to the Conservatives.

Labour’s wins in the northern urban areas, such as Merseyside, will more than ever expose a divided Britain, with the Scottish Nationalists having almost exclusive rule over on the other side of Hadrian’s Wall.

Should Liverpool raise the white flag over the Town Hall and surrender, and offer to work “under” a Conservative government.

Mayor Joe Anderson must be wondering where to turn as the guardian of a civic cupboard exceedingly bare.