Londoner, my a***!
Royle Family's Ricky Tomlinson stands as MP after Labour parachute southerner into Liverpool constituency
Daily Mail
6 February 2010
The questions were simple enough for any self-respecting Scouser - who was Bill Shankly, and who sang Ferry Cross The Mersey? Even the dimmest pub quiz team in Liverpool would surely have come up with the answers in a flash. But 28-year-old Luciana Berger, Labour's bright young hope to win the crucial Liverpool Wavertree seat at the next election, was forced to admit she didn't know.Royle Family's Ricky Tomlinson stands as MP after Labour parachute southerner into Liverpool constituency
Daily Mail
6 February 2010
And yesterday she was quickly beginning to find out that in this fiercely proud city, many believe what Shankly did for Liverpool FC - and what Gerry Marsden did for the Merseybeat anthem - are issues as important as life and death. So incensed is actor Ricky Tomlinson at the glamorous Miss Berger's lack of local knowledge that the Royle Family patriarch is planning to stand against her at the election. The 70-year-old former picket-line militant, who has lived most of his life in Liverpool, said he could even use the TV slob's celebrated catchphrase as a campaign slogan: 'Berger? My arse!'
The beauty and the beast style contest threatens to divide the Labour vote in Wavertree, where Blairite MP Jane Kennedy is standing down.
Miss Berger, once reported to be a friend of Tony Blair's son Euan, was chosen as the party's candidate to replace her. Mr Tomlinson's name, however, is being put up for selection next week for former mineworkers' leader Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party. Meanwhile backers of the former leading light in the National Union of Students have come to the aid of the party and the woman they have dubbed 'Lucky Luciana'. Yesterday, it seemed, she might need more of it than they thought if she is to hold what has long been billed as a safe Labour seat.
Her deficiency in the Scouse department was exposed by a local newspaper which set her four Liverpool-related questions. She got one right (correctly answering that it was John Lennon who gave his name to Liverpool airport), and another nearly right (she said there were 'at least two' Mersey tunnels when there are in fact only two). But she failed to answer the critical two questions. Veteran Liverpool Walton Labour MP Peter Kilfoyle subsequently called her a 'student politician' who lacked experience for the job.
Mr Tomlinson said: 'This woman they've parachuted in from London couldn't even answer some easy questions about Liverpool. I can't understand why they have picked someone from London. At one time, Liverpool had a contingent of working class MPs. If I get nominated it would be an awful cut in wages. But I think the state of British politics is abhorrent.'
Miss Berger, a director of Labour Friends of Israel and partner of Birmingham Erdington Labour MP Sion Simon, beat two Liverpool councillors on an all-women short-list to win the candidacy. The public service union Unison questioned Miss Berger's relationship with Jane Kennedy and complained to the Labour Party that she had stayed at the MP's home during the supposedly neutral and confidential-selection process.
Miss Berger denied accusations that she knew next to nothing about Liverpool and added: 'I'm not new to this city - I've been coming here for the past decade.'
Her potential opponent Mr Tomlinson was once a member of the far-right National Front but later became a passionate socialist. In the turbulent 1970s he became a familiar face on picket lines. After clashes at one, he was convicted of unlawful assembly, affray and conspiracy to intimidate. He has always protested his innocence.
