Topless pics and a baptism of fire: an hour with Liverpool Lib Dem leader Carl Cashman

On entering politics at 24, online trolls and why the Lib Dems could be in the driving seat by 2027

Dear readers — “Ultimately I’ll never be a mouthpiece for anyone else,” were the words of Lib Dem leader Carl Cashman when we met with him earlier this week. Abi sat down with the leader of the opposition at his home in Wavertree on Monday to talk all about his first year in the job, as well as his working relationship with former Lib Dem council leader Mike Storey (who some have alleged truly pulls the strings in the Liverpool Lib Dems instead of Cashman, something he emphatically denies). 

As always, this edition is for members only and is paywalled halfway down. To read the full story, you’ll need to be a paying member of The Post, which costs just £7 a month and gives you access to our entire back catalogue of features and investigations, as well as invites to our future events. We would not be able to produce high quality journalism without intrusive ads popping up all over your screen without your continued support — so please click the button below to become a member today and help us on our mission to give Merseyside the kind of news outlet it deserves.

---

Your Post briefing

Liverpool Council leader Liam Robinson says the former site of St John’s Market has “huge potential” to be used for another purpose in the near future. In a council meeting earlier this week he said an options report would set out alternative plans for the space, after traders were locked out due to a dispute over unpaid rent. The “partnership between the council and traders had broken down” since then, Robinson said. The news has been met with much anger from the former traders — “the [council] got what they wanted,” one told the BBC. “They haven’t enjoyed the process but they’ve got what they wanted."

After yesterday’s announcement of a General Election on 4th July, this report from BBC North West’s political editor Annabel Tiffin breaks down how things may play out in the region over the next six weeks. Liverpool Community Independents councillor Sam Gorst has already been put forward as a prospective candidate for Garston – a seat currently held by the long-serving Labour MP Maria Eagle. We can’t wait to see how this goes over the coming weeks.

And good news for Liverpool as it has been named the best large city break in the UK. The Which? survey asked people to rate places they’d visited over the last two years based on the quality of accommodation, food and drink, cultural sights and value for money. Liverpool topped the charts with a score of 84% — beating Manchester (71%) and capital cities Belfast (77%), London (76%) and Cardiff (72%). 

---

An hour with Liverpool Lib Dem leader Carl Cashman 

By Abi Whistance

“The aim is that I’ll be leader of the council by 2027,” says Carl Cashman, the 32-year-old leader of the Liberal Democrats in Liverpool. We’ve been sitting in the living room of his flat in Wavertree for around an hour, talking about his rapid ascent in politics and his appointment to the top job just over a year ago. Despite working from home today, he’s dressed rather formally — a button-up shirt, grey suit trousers — though on his feet are a pair of Crocs (a present from his mum, he bashfully explains from his seat across from me). 

From where we sit today, the prospect of Cashman himself becoming leader of Liverpool City Council, overturning a massive Labour majority on the way, feels like a bit of a pipedream. As of the 2023 local elections, the council has 61 Labour councillors, while the Lib Dems only have 15. Despite this, he insists, “we now have the infrastructure in place to do it in three years.” He’s usually softly spoken, and follows almost everything he says with a smile, but he delivers this statement like it’s a stone cold fact. “It doesn’t surprise me that you're surprised by it, but I think it’s achievable. I wouldn’t be telling you that if I didn’t think so.” 

Carl Cashman in Wavertree. Photo: Abi Whistance/The Post

Why does he think such a feat is achievable? “There are two things you always need in politics: people and money, and [money] is the next big thing for me,” he says. The Lib Dems’ membership has “massively increased” locally over the past year, by nearly 23% in 12 months. “Ultimately I don’t want the Lib Dems to be a fringe party in Liverpool, I want them to be a machine that can take on Labour. I think we’re there. What we need now is, with the right people in the right place, the money to support them as well.”

Still, even with that increase in membership, leading the council within the next three years feels like a lofty aim. Yet, as he’s keen to reinforce, if anyone can do it, he can.

It’s certainly hard to deny that Carl Cashman has had an impressive career so far. Entering the world of politics at the age of 24, he was elected as a councillor in his home turf of Knowsley back in 2016, and became the leader of the Knowsley Liberal Democrats that very same day. “It was pretty fast,” he laughs. Less than a year after his election as leader, he ran for metro mayor of Liverpool City Region against Labour’s Steve Rotheram, and Conservative candidate Tony Caldeira. He came third, but managed to get nearly 20,000 votes in the process.

This is all from someone who admits he originally had little aspiration in the way of politics. Like most other teenage boys, he wanted to be a footballer. None of his friends were particularly politically engaged, and his grandparents were both Labour voters. Cashman’s mother had given birth to him when she was just 17 and struggled to look after him at the time, so it was his grandfather (working on a farm) and grandmother (working in a chippy) who raised him. Regardless of the financial difficulties they fought through, he was inspired by their hard work – and their political instincts. “I don’t think they thought about it at the time, but they always had pretty liberal views. I think they helped shape my politics and philosophy in life that way.” 

Yet the person who really inspired him to get involved was none other than the man many blame for turning them off the party: Nick Clegg. In the now famous speech given by Clegg ahead of the formation of the coalition government with the Conservatives, he spoke of the start of a “new politics”; one that was “diverse, plural, when politicians of different persuasions come together to overcome their differences in order to deliver a good government for the sake of the whole country.”

This resonated with Cashman, and as soon as he turned 18 he joined the Lib Dems and became an active member of the party. Shortly after, he studied politics and philosophy at the University of Liverpool. But although he’d always been academic, he spent more time canvassing for local elections than writing papers. “I remember one of the essays I did I got a 2:2, and my lecturer wrote ‘Better luck next time… you’ve spent too much time campaigning and not on your studies’,” he recalls. “I think that was definitely a fair assessment at the time.”

David Cameron and Nick Clegg outside Downing Street in 2010. Photo: Flickr

Yet passion can only get you so far. It seems a leap to believe a mild-mannered university student waxing lyrical about Lib Dem policy on doorsteps could become the top figure in his local party just three years later. After all, he’d had no experience as a councillor prior to his election as leader — why did the group trust him with such a huge responsibility?