Well well

A name from the past has just appeared in the papers.

From 1983, Derek Hatton was deputy leader of Liverpool Council whilst John Hamilton was the leader. It was Hatton  that grabbed the limelight though. As a member of Militant, a Troskist organisation, he refused to raise council rates and set an illegal deficit budget of £30m for Liverpool in protest against Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government. .

One of his most controversial moves was to send out taxis with redundancy notices to council workers including teachers. I was at Anfield at the time. We received advice from our unions which basically told us to arrange overdraft loans from our banks. They reasoned that, even Liverpool Council could not continue with a situation where schools were closed because they had no staff. 

Neil Kinnock expelled Hatton from the party and the redundancy notices were never carried out.

That was 34 years ago and we might have expected Hatton to give up thoughts of a political career in that time. But no, he applied to rejoin the party several times but was only successful with his application in September 2018. He was readmitted 18th February this year only to be suspended two days later for tweeting "Jews with "humanity" should criticise Israel" in 2012. 

Ah well, at least Degsy will not want for money. He is motivational speaker and chairman of the new media company Rippleffect. Hatton is also a property developer in Cyprus. Just as back in the 1980s, Hatton dresses in designer suits and Italian hand made shoes.