Liverpool is a remarkable city. Its people deserve better than shoddy governance – The Guardian

Back in Liverpools chaotic, Militant-led 1980s, even Margaret Thatcher did not send in people directly to deal with a city council that she despised. Now, one of Englands largest cities is confronting the ignominy of a Conservative government sending in commissioners to run some of its affairs. Given the rotten state of the mayoralty and council, not many will argue against the verdict.

This is a city with a Labour mayor and where 80% of the councillors are Labour. Liverpool has not seen a Conservative-controlled council in 50 years, a Conservative MP elected since 1979, or a Conservative councillor voted in since 1994.

Liverpools voters might wonder what the point will be of heading to the polls in six weeks time to elect their new mayor and councillors. No one will be electing the commissioners arriving in the city. They are accountable only to the secretary of state for housing, communities and local government, Robert towns fund Jenrick and that well-known friend of Liverpool, Boris Johnson. The commissioners will tell the councillors and mayor what to do, not the other way round.

Todays council inspection report, authored by Max Caller, a veteran cleaner-up of other authorities, makes exceedingly damning reading. It refers to multiple failures including a serious breakdown of governance; what Jenrick describes as the awarding of dubious contracts; retrospective documentation (or its location in skips); an overall environment of intimidation; a pervasive culture of rule avoidance and the absence of ethics. The report is as bad as it gets.

Doing nothing was not an option for the government. Critics will lambast the arrival of commissioners as a Tory takeover. But that is far too simplistic, even if the optics are not great.

Commissioners are genuine experts in local government, and apolitical. The Conservatives have sent them in to run one of their own problem councils, Northamptonshire. They will work alongside the respected chief executive, Tony Reeves, who remains in overall control. The chief executive tends to be the power and the brains behind the operation on most councils anyway. Liverpool might be better governed, but it wont be democratic.

For the next three years, the commissioners and the chief executive will run the biggest problem areas planning, highways and regeneration most closely associated with the lamented regime of the previous mayor, Joe Anderson. The commissioners, not the council or the new mayor, will hold the purse strings in these arenas.

A decade ago, the Conservative government placed great faith in directly elected mayors as city saviours. They were to be the standard bearers of local democracy, directly accountable to the council taxpayers electing them.

Anderson, Liverpools council leader, eagerly swapped his job title to mayor, keen to seize pots of funding offered by a government otherwise noted for cuts. So keen, indeed, was he that he bypassed the referendum that all other cities contemplating the change offered their voters in 2012. Only Bristol said yes. On mayoral election days, almost 70% of Liverpools electors have found better things to do than vote.

Callers report shows a starkly different reality from the democratic utopia once envisaged. Local government by cabal, not council is the message. Meanwhile, Merseyside polices investigation into allegations of corruption which forced the government to act continues apace. That has seen Anderson arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to commit bribery and witness intimidation. Four other men were also arrested as part of the investigation, as was the citys director of regeneration, dismissed by the council this week. All six deny wrongdoing and none have been charged.

Those wanting a full restoration of local democracy face a long wait. The government has used powers of intervention under the 1999 Local Government Act a mere three times. It took three years to restore local power in each case and Jenrick has indicated a similar timeline here. Liverpool follows Northamptonshire, Rotherham and Tower Hamlets. Special measures are sustained ones.

Todays verdict gives vent to the criticisms of the mayor and alleged council cronyism, expressed in forthright terms on social media for years. The shenanigans of the 1980s, when Derek Hatton and the city council took on Thatcher, might have been crazy and futile but at least had a political cause. The Liberal Democrats took charge in 1998, but lost to Labour in 2010. The Liberal Democrat leader, Warren Bradley, was convicted of perjury after an electoral fraud investigation. His successor as council leader was Anderson. Liverpool doesnt do controversy-free.

Liverpool is a remarkable city that has made huge strides, despite brutal central government financial allocations. It deserves better.

The Conservative government may be nervous about intervening in Tory-free Liverpool. The citys red wall is one of the few sections that remains impregnable. But Labour nationally also seems fearful of Liverpool Labour. It supports Jenricks move, embarrassed by the antics of the mayor and some council members.

Labour nationally decides the partys Liverpool mayoral candidate to replace Anderson this May. Its selection committee has already decided that three female councillors, with a combined 43 years of council experience, are not good enough. Their candidacies were halted, and each told, humiliatingly, they need not reapply. A new surprise shortlist of two novice councillors emerged, the choice imminent.

A belated referendum on whether the city should have an elected mayor is scheduled for 2023. All-out elections will also take place, to put in place a new, cleansed and streamlined council. But we already know the winner of the 2021 contests: Robert Jenrick.

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Liverpool is a remarkable city. Its people deserve better than shoddy governance - The Guardian