I’m standing down as Lib Dem Leader in Liverpool. Here’s why.

In January I turned seventy and, having discussed things fully with my wife Erica, I decided that now would be the right time for me to stand down as Leader of the Liverpool Liberal Democrats.

I told the Party in January that I would stand down as Group Leader after the May elections. I have now informed the Liverpool Council Group that I intend to carry out that suggestion and will not be submitting my name to our Annual Group Meeting tonight.

The past 11 years of being the Group Leader have been the most gruelling of my political career. My sole aim when I took the leadership was to stabilise the Party and keep it in existence within the Chamber. We had gone down from sixty seats to just ten when I became Leader. That became three when in 2014 we took no seat at all in the city.

The three became two in 2015 when Barbara Mace retired from the Group and the joke was that you had to be called Kemp, have a CBE, and represent Church Ward. But 2015 marked the start of the turn around when despite there being one hundred Labour bods in Church Ward on election day to try and wipe out the Party, we held on with an 850-vote majority and boy did we celebrate!

Our increase since then has been steady but incremental and we have played our part in exposing the many problems within the Council of corrupt practices and corrupt processes. We did this in the face of incompetent and hostile officers and incompetent and hostile politicians. Bullying in the Council was rampant and was largely direct at the Lib Dems.

Although at one time we were not even the biggest opposition Party we have always been seen as THE opposition Party because we were competent, rational, and knowledgeable! Also, we were approachable to the media and others. I have tried wherever possible to be available to answer questions and join discussions.

Unfortunately, this bred a cynicism in a small number of people that we did not do enough to take Labour on or expose Labour’s manifest faults. What they expected two of us to do against eighty-two councillors and aggressive Mayor and a cowed bureaucracy is beyond my understanding. Even when we got to eleven members there was still great difficulty.

I am proud of the way that we stood up to bullying and worked with the media and others to expose the many bad practices within the council which trashed the city’s reputation and tore apart the city’s finances.

I am equally proud of the way that I was able to lead a Group which wanted to engage positively with the need to reform the Council and not just moan from the side-lines as the other opposition groups have done. Over the past 2 years, in particular we have led changes to audit, performance management and scrutiny all of which are desperately needed which Party is in control of the council. Only by doing this can we ensure value for money for our hard-pressed taxpayers.

In my view we now need to change our approach from being the anti-Labour Party to being the proactive Liberal Democrat Party. The various trials and charges that will take place which will expose even more of Labour’s murky past. We must define in a much better way than we have done what our vision of the future is. What Liverpool should look, feel like, and do in the medium and long-term. How our services should be delivered cost effectively in the short-term.

I can assure you all that leaving the Leadership does not alter in one jot my desire to help our Group and our Party move forward. It has been a privilege to be the Leader and I pledge my full support for whoever becomes the Leader this evening. Now I will be a very active ward member for Penny Lane and doing the work I love most working with people in the community that I live amongst and represent.

My thanks to all of you who have supported me, both inside and outside the Party during the past 11 years but my especial thanks to my lovely wife Erica who stood beside me and supported me through the thin and thin of it all and without whose love and support I could not have managed to even survive the hostile environment of Liverpool Politics.