Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson withdraws from elections
The mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, has said he will not be seeking re-election after police extended his bail as part of a corruption inquiry.
Anderson, who was praised by the government for his handling of the city’s Covid crisis, said he had decided to step back from his role leading Liverpool city council and would not stand in May’s delayed mayoral election.
He insisted the police investigation “will confirm I have done nothing wrong, and my name and reputation will be exonerated”. However he accepted his presence would be a distraction from “the positives of our city”, which he said he had always put first during his 22-year political career.
Anderson was arrested at the start of December on suspicion of bribery and witness intimidation as part of an investigation into building and development contracts awarded in Liverpool.
Several officers from Liverpool council were also arrested as part of the wide-ranging Operation Aloft inquiry, including the director of regeneration, Nick Kavanagh, and Andy Barr, the council’s assistant director of highways and planning.
Shortly before Christmas the government announced an emergency inspection of the council, to check the authority’s planning, highways, regeneration and property management functions and “the strength of associated audit and governance arrangements”.
In a statement posted on Twitter, Anderson said Merseyside police had extended his bail until February. “The timing of the extended bail notice means that it is in the best interests of the Labour party to seek a new candidate for the mayoral election,” he wrote.
“Although our justice system is built on the principle of being innocent until proven guilty, their decision does in fact change everything, and restricts and restrains me from functioning as normal. Any media attention around the investigation will clearly be focused on me and not on the positives of our city and that is not how it should be.
“I have always put the city first, that is why it is a tough, but the right, decision to continue to step back from my role in the council until the inquiries are completed.”
The former social worker, who started out in the merchant navy, was first elected as a councillor in 1998. He became Liverpool’s first directly elected mayor in 2012, and had been reselected as Labour’s candidate to fight the local election in May, which was postponed from 2020 because of Covid.
He said he would continue to fight to prove his innocence and to protect his legacy as mayor of his home city, writing: “It has been a great privilege to represent the Labour party and be part of a collective movement that represents people like me growing up in, and trying to find a way out of, poverty. Whoever the new Labour mayoral candidate is, I will cheer them on with all my heart.”