This breakthrough vote is a tribute to the work put in by the Beacon Liverpool campaign team and to those who voted for change in Kirkdale.

The results of the Kirkdale By-election can be viewed below.

Peter Furmedge came second, behind the Labour candidate. To finish above so many established parties following just a three week campaign gives us optimism for the future and is testament to the hard work and commitment of all the volunteers and supporters on the campaign team

The result of this by-election, in one of Labour’s safest seats, is a clear and unequivocal message to Keir Starmer, the Labour Party and Liverpool’s Labour Councillors that times are changing. They can no longer take working class votes for granted. We will be challenging them for each and every vote, community by community, door by door.

The Kirkdale vote, and indeed the 11.83% low turnout rejection of Labour in Kirkdale, shames Labour and their cynical electoralism. Concentrating  only on the small percentage of the community that they think will see them to victory, ignoring the rest, driving them away from engagement in local democracy.

Focusing on the few to the exclusion of the many is the same strategy that opened the door to the right wing in the former Red Wall. It’s a dangerous game that Labour are playing. Unless we challenge this, the palpable rage that is building within our community will eventually find another outlet, similar or worse to the emergence of the right wing in the former Labour heartlands.

This low vote is a message to Labour that it isn’t OK for our councillor to be resident in Spain while our community pulls together  to make sure that our elderly and vulnerable neighbours were looked after during the pandemic.

This low vote is a message to our Labour Council that it isn’t ok to make another £19m in cuts, including devastating cuts to adult social care while paying a £12m bill to the Tory Government for their Commissioners.

And this low vote is a message that it isn’t OK for Keir Starmer to court favour from Rupert Murdoch by writing for the Sun and reiterating his intention to do the same again. A few stern letters and resolutions will not make this stain on the party go away for Liverpool Labour. 

But enough of Labour. We have planted our flag in Kirkdale. We have achieved a positive election outcome for a new movement, within a few weeks, from a standing start.

We founded Beacon Liverpool as an online platform during the pandemic, amid concern that the far right were attempting to fill a political void left by London centric politics. The registration of Beacon as a political party is still ongoing. We had no prior voter data and Peter Furmedge was a first time candidate.

But we still broke through on polling day, gaining more votes than three national parties with Parliamentary representation, and now we get back to the work of building our people powered politics from the ground up – the antidote to Liverpool’s failed boss politics.

We will work hard to promote a municipalist socialist politics, a participatory politics that is built upon bringing our community into the decision making processes of local government. A politics that seeks to make the land and assets of places like Kirkdale ward work for the people in those places, not absentee landlords, speculative investors and far away financial institutions. A politics of resistance to a devastating decade of cuts.

This election result marks the beginning of the next stage of Beacon Liverpool. We will continue to work within Kirkdale and beyond to empower our people to make the changes that our communities need.

No more will Liverpool be anybody’s political football.