I have posted before about how the Labour Party across Merseyside have been doing their utmost to unseat the Labour Chairman of Merseytravel – Cllr. Mark Dowd. This has a long history to it but it certainly goes back as far as the appalling £70m Merseytram debacle if not further. The Labour Party’s problem has always been been that Mark Dowd is the biggest beast in their Merseyside jungle and all their attempts to remove him have failed to date.

However, sources tell me that Liverpool City Council’s Labour Group may well be on Mark’s case and that they may have caused Dowd’s embarrassing and expensive (£1.5m) U turn over local rail integration. If you recall the RMT union were being ‘blamed’ for Dowd’s U turn and I am sure they were at least a part of the pressure on him but it seems that the issue may well have been latched onto by Labour Councillors as as a way to try to destabilise Cllr. Dowd.

It should be remembered that Peter Dowd (Mark’s brother) is Labour Leader on Sefton Council where Mark is also a councillor and a few weeks ago there was stunt pulled to gain an extra Labour seat on Merseytravel for Labour at the expense of the Lib Dems. We knew at the time that Dowd (senior) was under pressure and needed another supporting vote on the Transport Authority and it now seems that the reason for that could well have been Liverpool City Council Labour turning up the heat on Mark.

I supect this story will run for a while.