Merseyside Labour's Internal (and now external) Strife

When you are highlighting some of the problems in another party, it is perhaps worth doing so in a humorous way.
One of the best ever quotes I’ve read in a match report ran as follows:

“Everton's grit is exemplified by their central midfield pairing of Lee Carsley and Thomas Gravesen, whose bald heads glint so meanly that it would be no surprise to wake up one morning to discover that they had engineered a coup in a small Latin American state.”

The current civil war in Labour on Merseyside brought this quote back to my mind. From an outside perspective, it looks like Joe Anderson has failed in his attempts to engineer his own coup on the Combined Authority, and is now throwing his rattle out of the pram because he has not got what he wanted.

What comes across loud and clear is that Joe Anderson wants as much power as he can gather. He is a centraliser and tolerates no dissent within his own group in Liverpool. What is clear from this event is that the Labour leaders in neighbouring authorities are not cowed by his behaviour in the way his own councillors tend to be.

Rather than accept a democratic verdict, Mayor Anderson goes to the press and now creates an almighty row that reflects badly on our city and our region. He should perhaps reflect on the fact that he has a big enough job here in Liverpool already, with some of the worst budget cuts in the country. Maybe he should be finding ways to protect services with new funds, not putting them at risk with what appears to be very ego-centric behaviour.

EDIT:

I've had this comment from Paul Slater, but it has not uploaded so it is as follows:

"This sort of thing was apparent at the local level, in Liverpool last year, in the case of the awful decision of the present Labour administration to sell off the Sefton Park Meadowlands.

Some Labour councillors in Liverpool, told residents that they were opposed to the selling off, of this greatly valued, and appreciated, public open space. However, when it came to voting on the issue, at City Council meetings, these same people voted to proceed with the disposal of this public open space."