MERSEYSIDE branch of the Communist Party condemns the decision by the Conservative government to impose commissioners on Liverpool City Council.

The sorry state of affairs set out in the Caller report are an indictment of both the Conservative government and the leadership of the Liverpool Labour Party.

Since 2010 Conservative-led governments have cut funding to Liverpool City Council by over £450 million leading to massive cuts in jobs and services as well as a fire sale of council assets.

In 2012 Liverpool City Council Labour Group agreed a city deal (bribe) with the then Conservative chancellor George Osborne which established a directly elected mayor (DEM) without the consent of the people of Liverpool.

These are the causal factors of the crisis of democratic governance and maladministration now engulfing Liverpool.

In particular the patronage and powers concentrated in a single person by the DEM model, for the very purpose of striking deals with the private sector and bypassing democratic processes, are at the root of the problem.

Merseyside Communist Party believes that the abolition of the DEM post is a prerequisite for a return to democratic norms in Liverpool City Council.

With technocratic commissioners arriving from Whitehall, the dangers for services, jobs, terms and conditions are obvious and therefore the city’s trade unions - particularly those in the public sector - have a crucial role to play. An entire city can not be made to suffer for the self-indulgence or incompetence of a few aloof figures in senior positions.

Merseyside’s Communists stand ready to support the Liverpool workforce, their unions and residents across the city in resisting a default expectation that the misery of further austerity can be inflicted by civil servants who are not answerable to our communities.

Only the reversal of decades long austerity and the restoration of outsourced services to council control can provide the conditions for inclusive and progressive municipal socialism in Liverpool.