A 'patsy' on the tracks: Is the government’s big rail deal a missed opportunity for Liverpool?
A 'patsy' on the tracks: Is the government’s big rail deal a missed opportunity for Liverpool?
Plus: Meet the Sefton Labour candidate who appears to hate Labour
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We had a great reception to Thursday’s lowdown of the upcoming metro mayoral elections (with plenty of juicy quotes from insiders in Steve Rotheram’s office), courtesy of the New Statesman’s Jonny Ball. If you missed it, make amends urgently:
A former LCR staffer reports that a bunker mentality has developed within Rotheram’s office. “He is becoming increasingly distant from officers,” they tell me. “He doesn't know what he wants to achieve, and so it's really hard for him to lead.”
Last week also saw Jack desperately attempting to avoid getting lager in his hair at the Baltic’s brand new Boxpark and James Gilmour attempting to answer Merseyside’s most pressing question: when does a “trackless tram” become a “bendy bus”? Read that here.
Editor’s note: To read those stories — and a host of others from our back catalogue — you’ll need to be a paying member. It costs just £7 a month to get the full Post experience, and you’ll get an extra eight extra editions of great reporting, political analysis and cultural writing each month. Our paying members also allow us to carry on publishing lots of free journalism for people who are less able to afford it, helping to bring more high quality journalism to Merseyside.
The big story: Is the government’s big rail deal a missed opportunity for Liverpool?
Top line: The recent announcement of a new £12 billion high speed rail link between Liverpool and Manchester has been greeted warmly on the other end of the M62. The question many are asking here is a painfully familiar one though: is this yet another case of Manchester having a feast while Liverpool scraps over crumbs?
Key details: Last month, transport minister Huw Merriman made a big announcement regarding the next stage of Northern Powerhouse Rail.
The government committed to a new £12 billion line between Liverpool and Manchester Piccadilly, via Warrington Bank Quay and Manchester Airport, taking 35 minutes
Manchester’s metro mayor Andy Burnham said the announcement “opens the door” for his dream of a new underground station at Manchester Piccadilly (previously ruled out by former transport minister Grant Shapps in 2022)
Merriman also said he was “willing to explore” a possible new Parkway station for Liverpool — though it isn’t yet clear where this would be
How does it serve Liverpool? To what extent there has been backlash in Liverpool, it’s of a familiar sort for Rotheram. Namely that once again, this is an announcement that massively favours Manchester, opening the door to Burnham’s dream project and creating a new link to Manchester Airport while leaving Liverpool with far less significant investment.
There will be no rail or tram improvement to Liverpool Airport, which led to some backlash against the announcement. In response on X, Rotheram said he was trying to work “in the real world” as opposed to offering “fantasy solutions”. He pointed out that West Yorkshire’s station tram link was looking at up to £2 billion, a potentially “prohibitive” cost. One might reasonably ask that if £2 billion is prohibitive, how does the city region expect the government to find £6 billion for a tidal barrage?
Rotheram added that pursuing an airport link would inevitably mean ditching other plans — “like [his] plans for three new stations in Halton, St Helens and the Wirral”.
In response to suggestions that the deal biassed Manchester (leaving Liverpool with merely an additional parkway station and little else), Rotheram said this: “If you read the full announcement, you'll see that we're not just talking about a parkway.” He noted that there would also be “transformational investment in city centre stations that will address capacity”.
Earlier this year we wrote about Liverpool’s transport possibilities post-HS2. We spoke to Andrew Morris — who had helped lead the campaign to connect Liverpool to HS2 — who believed the government canning the project actually presented Liverpool an opportunity to compete for whatever funds were newly available in its wake.
This might have meant the expansion of Lime Street to deal with capacity issues (perhaps by knocking down the Liner Hotel and car park)
Or it could even have meant the development of an Edge Hill Spur: integrating the city lines into the city centre underground network, utilising the disused Wapping Tunnel (meaning mean trains could run east to west under the city with much greater ease, eliminating two change services)
In that piece, Morris wasn’t hopeful though. He described Rotheram as a “patsy” on rail, easily manipulated by the shrewder Burnham. Rotherham has been combative defending the latest plans on X, but to his detractors these latest announcements will further serve that narrative.
Bottom line: Reducing the distance between Lime Street and Piccadilly to 35 minutes would be a boost, no doubt, but given the distance between Lime Street and Manchester Victoria is already 35 minutes it isn’t exactly transformational. Meanwhile, given the vagueness of the talk surrounding a new parkway station, compared to the much more meaningful plans on the Manchester end, it’s hard to imagine the patsy accusations dying down any time soon.
Your Post briefing
Joe Johnson, the Labour candidate for St Oswald, has been criticised after screenshots from his social media surfaced showing tweets in support of Thatcher and Trump, apparent far-right views and anti-Labour sentiments. In one tweet in response to a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020, Johnson says police should “start hitting them with batons and taser them”. He also defended a video of a man being kneed in the face by a police officer at the same protest, writing “police should be allowed to do their jobs”. Other tweets include him voicing his support of Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg and Donald Trump, writing in May 2020: “Well done @real DonaldTrump DONT take their crap”. Johnson has since deleted his social media, but said: “I am not surprised, although disappointed by putting myself up for local election to help the area that some people would try and shoot me down for past views, beliefs and opinions.”
Staff at Blue Coat school in Wavertree have formally voted by postal ballot for strike action. In an indicative ballot last month 93% of staff backed the action, and on Friday the official vote was held. Despite recently being crowned the best school in the north west by the Sunday Times, Blue Coat has been having a tumultuous time; staff issued a vote of no confidence in the school’s senior leadership in March, headteacher Scilla Yates recently announced she would step back from her duties and former headteacher Mike Pennington is now under investigation from the Teaching Regulation Authority (as is Yates).
Fans of knobbly knees contests and holidaying like it’s 1962 can breathe a sigh of relief. Southport’s Pontins, owned by everyone’s favourite hotel company, which recently shut down without warning, could be snapped up by their old foe: Butlins. Butlins don’t currently have a site in the north west and would prefer to redevelop an existing site than start a new one afresh. Two years ago we paid Pontins a visit and got an unusual wake up call. “The next morning I awake to a banging sound outside…A voice is accompanying the banging so I listen in. ‘Get out of bed you lazy cunt,’ it seems to be saying. Ah, this must be housekeeping.”
Russell Newcombe, who coined the term “harm reduction” after moving to Liverpool to help fight the Aids pandemic, has died aged 66. Newcombe spent his life advocating for a reform of drug policies, first using the term — which is now widely used to describe an alternative to the more punitive “war on drugs” — in a January 1987 issue of Druglink magazine. Two weeks before his death, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs passed a resolution accepting the term “harm reduction”. Advocates had been fighting to have it accepted for decades.
Post Picks
🪩Liverpool Disco Festival heads to Sefton Park this Sunday headlined by Glitterbox legend Dave Lee and house DJ Pal Joey. Joining them are a host of the city’s best DJs including Dharma Collective and Amber Rose. We’ll be there — why not grab a ticket here?
🎨Join artist and illustrator Lo Tierney on Wednesday for the second Draw and Doodle event at Future Yard in Birkenhead. All materials are provided for the session — find out more here.
🧑🍳Learn how to make a traditional vegetarian El Salvadorian dish at Cafe Laziz’s cooking class this Thursday. The class is being hosted by the Riddling Rack in Newton, but it’s well worth the trip to immerse yourself in the culture of Latin America. Find out more here.
🎸Liverpool natives The Zutons head to Jacaranda Baltic tomorrow for the launch of their much-anticipated new album, The Big Decider. Doors open at 7pm — find out more here.
Home of the week
This four bedroom terraced house on the border of Crosby and Waterloo has given us a little bit of decor envy. It’s on the market for £270,000 and comes with a feature log burner and French doors leading to a patio and garden space out back — find out more here.
Recommended reads
As BBC drama The Responder is set to return to our screens for a second season in May, we’re reminded of this piece by Liverpolitan on how Liverpool stereotypes are often leaned upon in TV and film. While we were fans of the series, others weren’t too happy with yet another crime drama being filmed in the city. Queue the Twitter row…
“He made politics human. The most important thing he ever did was make politics real and have a face.” A fantastic obituary in the Guardian for Birkenhead MP and campaigner Frank Field, who died last week after a battle with terminal cancer.
Steve Rotherham would rather spend his time complaining about his ( and the Region's ) poor treatment at the hands of others (usually the government), rather than coming up with ambitious plans for the Region. He should be insisting that Liverpool John Lennon Airport be included in any new rail infrastructure resulting from the £12bn made available by the government. He should also be fighting for increased capacity at Lime Street station, and use of the Wapping tunnel. His idea of 3 new stations on lines not even served by Mersey rail is pure electioneering propaganda. We need positive, ambitious proposals, not words of defeatism.
Disappointing on the face of it, but speed is really not the issue we should be focussing on. What we need is reliability. So extra lines and capacity and new(er) trains so that you’ve a decent chance of getting from A to B in the advertised time would be far more valuable than (say) a headline 25 minute figure.