Draw line under festival fiasco

Aug 22 2007 Liverpool Daily Post

THE rift between the political leadership of Liverpool and the officers leading its plans for Capital of Culture year widened into a gaping chasm yesterday, thanks to a leaked email from council leader Warren Bradley.

The email, to city council chief executive Colin Hilton, demanded that Jason Harborow should be relieved of his duties as chief executive of Liverpool Culture Company.

It was written on August 3, the day after the Culture Company announced that the Mathew Street Festival was being cancelled.

Labour critics of the city’s Liberal Democrat leadership claimed yesterday that the revelation of the document proved that the inquiry into the Mathew Street affair ordered by Cllr Bradley would not be truly independent.

Yesterday afternoon, Mr Harborow gathered his beleaguered Culture Company staff at Millennium House and made an impassioned speech in which he called for them to stay together as a team, making it clear that he had every intention of soldiering on as their captain.

The Daily Post has learned that Mr Harborow and Cllr Bradley have not spoken to each other in weeks. The relationship between the two men, and by inference the relationship between the teams they lead, could hardly be in a more parlous position, just over four months out from the start of European Capital of Culture year.

The echoes of the Henshaw-Storey breakdown between officers and councillors, in which emails also played their crucial part, are all too clear.

Last week, we said that the time had gone for high-profile sackings or resignations. What is needed now, we still believe, is for everyone to pull together to ensure that 2008 is the success we all need it to be.

However it can be achieved, a line needs to be drawn under this embarrassing fiasco, and quickly. Whether the outcome of the inquiry will achieve that remains to be seen.