Labour announces Liverpool metro mayoral candidate
MP Steve Rotheram has won the race to become Labour’s candidate for the Liverpool City Region’s first metro mayor.
Party members voted for their preferred candidate between Joe Anderson, the elected mayor of the city of Liverpool, and MP Steve Rotheram and Luciana Berger.
Rotheram won with 41.6% of the vote (2,029 votes), whilst Anderson got 33.7% (1,641) and Berger received 24.6% (1,202).
He is Jeremy Corbyn’s parliamentary private secretary (PPS) and is the MP for Liverpool Walton, the safest seat in the country.
He spent eight years as a Labour councillor in Liverpool’s Fazakerley ward before being elected to Parliament in 2010 and was the Lord Mayor of Liverpool in the city’s year as European Capital of Culture.
Rotheram, whose constituency includes Anfield and Goodison Park, was a prominent Hillsborough disaster campaigner.
His mayoral campaign’s slogan was “No borough left behind”, stressing the importance of the city region’s five other authorities – Sefton, Knowsley, Wirral, St Helens and Halton.
Elections to decide the new metro mayor for Merseyside and Halton will be held in May 2017. The metro mayor for will have control over transport and strategic planning as part of the £900m, 30 year deal with Whitehall.
To be eligible to vote Labour members were required to live in the city region and have been a member of the party before 19 July 2015, which mean the 8,000 party members who joined after Jeremy Corbyn was voted as leader were excluded from the vote.
Shadow home secretary Andy Burnham was voted in as Labour’s mayoral candidate for Greater Manchester, yesterday.
He won out with 51% of the vote against police and crime commissioner and the interim mayor, Tony Lloyd and MP for Bury South, Ivan Lewis.
Meanwhile in the West Midlands, former MP and current MEP Siôn Simon has been selected as the Labour Party candidate for its mayoral election after being backed by 71% of the party’s members.
The creation of elected mayors was one of the conditions set by former chancellor George Osborne when devolution deals were agreed.
