The Labour party has selected the MP for Liverpool Walton, Steve Rotheram, as its candidate to fight the Liverpool city region mayoral election in May 2017.
Rotheram, who is Jeremy Corbyn’s private parliamentary secretary, won a decisive victory over the mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, and the MP for Liverpool Wavertree, Luciana Berger.
The election was conducted under the alternative vote system. In the first round, Rotheram won 42%, Anderson won 34% and Berger 25%. In the second round, once Berger voters’ second preferences were redistributed, Rotheram won 55% and Anderson won 42%.
Of Berger’s voters who named a second preference, 62% chose Rotheram and 38% chose Anderson. A total of 4,872 local party members placed a vote, a turnout of 72.6%.
Rotheram, a vocal supporter of the Labour leader, is a former bricklayer and lord mayor of Liverpool, and has won fans locally with his active role in the campaign to get justice for the families of those killed in the Hillsborough disaster.
The Liverpool city region has a population of 1.5 million and covers five Merseyside councils – Knowsley, Liverpool, St Helens, Sefton and Wirral – plus Halton in Cheshire. The area’s new mayor – a role created as part of the region’s devolution deal – will oversee transport, planning and post-16 education, as well as a £900m, 30-year investment fund.
As with the race to be Labour’s candidate in Greater Manchester and the West Midlands, polling closed on Friday at 12pm. On Tuesday the shadow home secretary, Andy Burnham, was declared the party’s candidate in Greater Manchester and the local MEP Siôn Simon was announced for the West Midlands.
“I want to send a strong message to Theresa May,” said Rotheram following the announcement. “Prime minister, you may have backtracked on the idea of a northern powerhouse, but with Andy Burnham as the mayor of Greater Manchester and me as the metro mayor of the Liverpool city region, it’s our intention to create a north-west powerhouse.”
Rotheram acknowledged that his support for the Labour leader had helped him in the race. “When we phoned people I think what potentially did have an impact was this underused and rare commodity in politics at the moment and that is loyalty,” he said.
“I didn’t support Jeremy Corbyn [in the last leadership election]. I supported my best mate Andy Burnham and I did everything that I could to get Andy elected. But when the result came out in September 2015, we got whacked. There was an overwhelming support for Jeremy and, therefore, I think it’s right that we get behind the leader of the Labour party.”
Of the 17 MPs representing constituencies in the Liverpool city region, 15 are Labour, one is a Liberal Democrat and one is a Conservative. The dominance of the Labour party in the area means that Rotheram will be the odds-on favourite to win.
Anderson, a prominent local government figure in Liverpool who campaigned for the creation of the metro mayor role, was initially the favourite to win the race and said he was heartbroken at the result. His role as mayor of the city of Liverpool is unaffected by the new metro mayor role and he will stay in post until May 2020 after winning a second term in this year’s local elections.
He has previously criticised Westminster politicians for standing for the metro mayor nominations, describing Burnham’s assertion that the role of metro mayor was a “cabinet-level job requiring cabinet-level experience” as “ignorant and insensitive” and “disrespectful to every local government leader who has worked hard for their area”.
Berger, a former shadow minister for mental health, was the last person to declare she was entering the race, becoming the second member of the shadow cabinet in a month – after Burnham – to announce their intention to stand for a metro mayor position. She is the youngest person and the only woman to have stood to be Labour’s candidate for any of the new metro mayor positions.
