The only Tory in town…almost
The decline of the Conservatives in Liverpool wasn’t only down to Thatcher, says Dr David Jeffery
Dear members — with everyone in Liverpool’s local politics looking ahead to the big elections in two weeks, we thought we’d be willfully contrarian and look back instead. Last week we caught up with Dr David Jeffery, a lecturer in British politics at the University of Liverpool and author of the excellent new book — Whatever Happened to Tory Liverpool? The book charts the party’s decline in the city, from their victory in the 1968 council elections to 2012’s mayoral elections, when the BBC reported from Wavertree Tennis Centre that their candidate had been defeated by a rival wearing a polar bear outfit. He explained where it all went wrong.
Jeffery himself is also a rare thing, a Liverpudlian Tory, which is about as common as finding an actual polar bear in Wavertree. Or so you’d think.
You can buy the book here on Amazon, or you can read it here online for free as a PDF with Open Access. You can follow Dr Jeffery on Twitter here, where he tweets about municipal politics, running mara…
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