Dear members — welcome to our latest members-only newsletter. We’ve got a fascinating report from Sefton to end the week, where Harry has been digging into some local political controversy. Why has the Labour Party banned its members from meeting in the council ward of Ford? We’ve spoken to a dozen local politicians and activists to try to find out…

So far, we have not seen a major increase in the Covid-19 case rate in the city region — the rate as of Monday is up just over 10% on the week before. We’ve got the latest numbers in our mini-briefing below, and we will keep a close eye on the data in the days to come.