"...local residents do not want a local councillor."

It is no secret that your local Lib Dem FOCUS team have coined the Labour Party in our area as "Bootle Labour". It went out on many of our FOCUS leaflets across the Ward. Indeed, this was the view shared by fellow local resident and former Manor Conservative Councillor, Martyn Barber.

Interestingly, this is clearly something that the majority of local Manor residents do not seem too worried about. For the past two local elections here in the Crosby, Thornton and Hightown areas there have been two successive Bootle Labour candidates elected to serve locally. I fully accept that, after all the Liberal Democrats have always stood on a platform of democracy - particularly at the most local level. Although it does raise questions about why local residents do not want a local councillor.

Even more interestingly perhaps, similar circumstances seem to be happening in the Maghull area also. Tony Robertson blogs:

In Maghull the Town Council (a large Parish Council) is now 13 Labour seats and 3 Lib Dem but most of the Labour members don’t even live in Maghull! The question is why do many electors in Maghull seemingly want their Parish Councillors to live elsewhere? They could have voted for Maghull residents but chose to pick councillors from other communities such as Bootle, Crosby and Aintree to run Maghull’s affairs. Bearing in mind that the taxes raised by Maghull Town Council will not be paid by those councillors who live outside of Maghull, is this not a odd state of affairs?