Saturday, March 08, 2008

Councillor Beatrice Fraenkel defects from Liverpool Liberal Democrats to Labour Party

Here in Liverpool the Liberal-Democrats are holding their national Spring Conference.

I have blogged before about whether they would come to regret their decision, politically. (I know they wont regret coming to Liverpool in terms of the city and the facilities.)

What wont have helped their mood is the news that a long-standing LibDem councillor, with 21 years service, has this week defected to Labour.

Beatrice Fraenkel has resigned from the Liberal-Democrats calling them "damaged and dysfunctional". She is a member of the national Standards Board (or was until now, she has of course had to resign as she was there as a Liberal-Democrat)and so presumably knows what she is talking about when it comes to councillors' bad behaviour.

This is what the Liverpool Echo had to say about the defection. And this is the Liverpool Daily Post's take on it.

And this is what the woman who deselected her has had to say

Not very nice, considering she is probably a big part of what we might call the "final straw".

I dont understand the criticism about the timing, people are calling it cynical, but naturally one would want to maximise the impact of a defection. That's politics!

Anyway, I am pleased Beatrice will be joining us on the Labour benches - and that has pushed our female representation stats up a bit more too.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

(scouseboy) I feel Beatrice was particularly badly done to in being deselected in Cressington by the Lib Dems, and I e-mailed her telling her that at the time.
In the early 90's
She was opposition spokesperson on a major commitee that I chaired. I respected her then, as was a very knowlegable person. The lib dems loss is Labours gain.

Anonymous said...

(scouseboy)On the question of female representation, by my working out there currently are two more women than men in the Labour group!!!! Louise please correct me if I am wrong.

Louise Baldock said...

17 women
Bailey
Baldock
Bebb
Corbett
Fraenkel
Gladden
Holleran
Kent
Knight
Murray
O'Byrne
Rainey
Rasmussen
Rothery
Simon
Sullivan
Walton

19 men
Anderson
Ben-Tovim
Brant
Cooke
Dean
Hanratty
Hanson
Kennedy
McIntosh
McLinden
Munby
Prendergast
Rotheram
Small
Spriggs
Strickland
Walker
White
Williams


Nearly there....

Anonymous said...

How on earth do you say that she was hard done to being de-selected? The woman is one of the laziest, money grabbing councillors that have ever served on this council. She never stays a full meeting, even the last council meeting (her first as a labour member) she left after an hour and couldn't even be bothered to wait and vote for her party's motion on the cuts to services. An absolute distgrace!!!