Lib Dem councillor deselected "after clash with Warren Bradley

Mar 24 2008

A POPULAR Lib-Dem councillor has been deselected amid claims he challenged the party leader, Warren Bradley, over the fallout from the Mathew Street festival cancellation.

Cllr Kevin Firth, who has held his seat for 10 years, was challenged for the right to stand in the Old Swan ward at a meeting of the Liberal Democrat’s West Derby and Wavertree association on Thursday evening.

Gary Millar, chief executive of Parr Street Studios and chairman of the Linda McCartney Centre Field of Women Appeal, won the contest and will now be the Lib Dem candidate in the ward.

In December council leader Warren Bradley came under fire for his handling of the Mathew Street Festival fiasco.

According to a senior party source, there was a meeting of the Lib- Dem group at the town hall during the December period of intense pressure on Cllr Bradley and the party.

The source said: “Kevin Firth had the temerity to hold the leader of the group to account.”

Cllr Bradley has insisted it is nothing new for a sitting candidate to face challenge and he had asked Cllr Firth to ask his questions in the interest of “transparency”.

In the Croxteth ward, Rhys Jones’s football coach Steve Geoghegan is to stand as a Lib Dem candidate.

The Fir Tree Football Club’s under-12s manager and community campaigner made the emergency calls to the ambulance and police service when Rhys was hit by a bullet in the car park outside the Fir Tree pub last August.

A father himself, Mr Geoghegan, said it was time the community took a stand against gun and gang culture and demanded more police funding for the area.

Mr Geoghegan said: “As a normal working family man I feel left down by the government on many issues but mainly on the way that so called gang culture has not been addressed.”