Liverpool mayor 'can work with Reform' after St Helens win

Mayor Steve Rotheram has said he is willing to work with Reform UK as long as leaders can avoid "playing silly games" - after the party secured a major election win in the Liverpool City Region.

Reform took control of St Helens Council in a key victory during the recent local elections, meaning the authority's new leader George Woodward is eligible to take a seat in the cabinet of the area's combined authority.

Rotheram told BBC Radio Merseyside he was "genuinely gutted" about the results, which saw the council's former Labour leader Anthony Burns lose his seat.

But he said if Woodward "wants to do the best for St Helens and doesn't want to play party politics all the time" he had an "important job to do".

"If he wants to do that, then we can move forward," Rotheram said.

"If he wants to spend his time playing silly games, then that's up to him."

Woodward will become the first member of the combined authority's cabinet who is not a member of the Labour Party.

Rotheram said he "knew nothing about" Woodward prior to the election other than seeing a video of him "questioning people coming into the country with passports".

However, he said: "Hopefully we can work together.

"Look, I had to work with somebody called Boris Johnson, as you know, and absolutely he's anathema to me, but I had to work with him for the good of the city region."

Claire Hamilton, the BBC's political reporter for Merseyside, said it appeared as if all parties wanted to start off with the "intention" of working together.

However, she added: "There are things which Reform may be opposed to that have been kind of accepted ideology in the combined authority - because all the leaders have been Labour up to now.

"There may be things maybe like on net zero, maybe on active travel, maybe on diversity, equality and inclusion policies, that Reform have criticised in other local authorities and have said that things are a waste of money."

Rotheram was also asked about why he believed voters in St Helens had turned to Reform.

"I went to St Helens, but I went to most of the places that were having elections, not just in the Liverpool City region, but beyond," he said.

"And it was quite clear that it didn't matter how good the local picture was, it was the national scene that was taking a lot of the oxygen on the doorstep."

Rotheram is a very close friend of Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham, who is running for a seat in Parliament at the forthcoming Makerfield by election.

Burnham is widely expected to challenge Sir Keir Starmer for the Labour leadership if he is able to beat the Reform candidate, local plumber Robert Kenyon.

Asked for his thoughts, Rotheram denied Burnham had "changed his mind" about devolution - which he had frequently championed - by attempting to return to Westminster politics.

"He certainly hasn't changed his mind," he said.

"What he's doing is using the lessons that we've learned from doing something with devolution and saying, at a national level, he can promote devolution at a regional level.

"And I think that's a perfect scenario for him because there are not many people who've seen politics from those different angles and perspectives.

"So he can go back down there and try to persuade our government to have faster and deeper devolution in areas like ours, where we can get delivery."

Other candidates announced so far in the Makerfield by-election are Rebecca Shepherd, from the Restore Britain party, and Alan 'Howlin' Laud Hope, from The Official Monster Raving Loony Party.

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