Who dares wins?

Posted by Robert Alcock on June 16, 2008 11:21 AM

SEFTON’S town halls and Westminster are still reeling from the aftershocks of extraordinary moves by Tory big hitters last week.

Who would have predicted seven days ago that Cllr Les Byrom would have defected to a party that still professes itself “democratic socialist”, while David Davis would have quit the Conservative front bench to force a by-election?

Cllr Les Byrom - the Red Flag now flies in Southport

'Basher' Davis - ex-SAS, ex-Amnesty International

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Gordon Brown:On the Ropes

Posted by Robert Alcock on June 1, 2008 11:10 PM

WHAT to make of the national fervour bubbling in the wake of slew of disastrous election results for Labour? The start of moves to oust Gordon Brown, with David Miliband stepping forward as the party’s saviour? The Sunday papers over the past fortnight have certainly made a good read, even if – as health secretary Alan Johnson suggested – reports of gathering plots have been sourced on the fantasies of ‘usual suspects’ holding forth under a fog of anonymity.

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Progress: polling boss on prospects for a hung parliament

Posted by Robert Alcock on May 18, 2008 12:40 AM

PROGRESS, the New Labour think-tank-cum-ginger-group, gets a fair amount of ridicule thrown its way. A personal favourite political scribbler, Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror, labeled its monthly self-titled magazine ‘the Blairite Pravda’ (after the Soviet Communist Party’s official rag, its title meaning ‘Truth’). Yet for all Labour’s current headaches in government, the latest Progress missive proves the ‘people’s party’ can still attract loans of grey matter from some intellectual big-hitters.

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Sefton: The heavy hand of history

Posted by Robert Alcock on May 13, 2008 12:34 AM

CONTRIBUTIONS from ‘backbench’ councillors were in short supply at last Thursday’s marathon council meeting. No doubt the hugely extended adjournments – one called for 15 minutes stretched to well over an hour – gave such members plenty of time to vent their views to their party chiefs behind closed doors.

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Sefton Council - Strife through diversity

Posted by Robert Alcock on May 11, 2008 8:56 PM

STAND-OFF – there is no other term to describe what unfolded over more than four-and-a-half hours at Southport Town Hall on Thursday night.

Today, Sefton Council is without a leader and with three of the nine seats on its ruling cabinet unfilled.

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Of probes and polls

Posted by Robert Alcock on April 29, 2008 8:00 PM

DEBI Jones greeted news the Standards Board for England had cleared her of any wrongdoing by saying she always knew she would be “vindicated”.
Well, that has come to pass. But the existence of a “sleaze” probe hanging over her for almost six months was a sign of dangerously high stakes in what Cllr Jones suggests was an organised maneouvre against her – what she terms 'a David and Goliath battle'.

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