This should have been Boris’s gig, of course. Our former editor’s perilous journey into the heart of the Scouse soul was a penance of sorts for that notorious Spectator editorial. But amid the media scrum, he didn’t have much chance to do anything but murmur a few defensive sorrys, hair flapping in the angry breeze. Closure wasn’t achieved. A Liverpool City Life from the great man’s pen might have made things better — or worse — but his thoughts have turned to London and good luck to him. Liverpool, meanwhile, has moved on too and I’m delighted to report that The Spectator remains substantially less loathed here than the Sun, which is still reviled for its critical take on the Hillsborough disaster 18 years ago.
Hillsborough, the Sheffield stadium where 96 Liverpool fans died, is but one of a series of tragedies to hit the city during the past 25 years. There was another stadium disaster at Heysel. There was the scandal at Alder Hey children’s hospital. There were the deaths of James Bulger, Ken Bigley, Anthony Walker and Rhys Jones — the very names evoke incredulity and despair. Has any other city suffered as much? The Rt Revd Dr James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool, thinks not. ‘Since I arrived in 1998, I have experienced the city’s raw grief at first hand on too many occasions. I don’t think we’re hooked on grief, as The Spectator suggested, but we do grieve together and I believe that’s a strength, not a weakness.’
A charismatic man in the old-fashioned, genuine sense of the word, the bishop argues that urban regeneration is the key to solving Liverpool’s problems. He’s not just talking about the shiny new developments in evidence along the old Mersey docks, but about reaching out to deprived areas such as Toxteth, Kensington and Croxteth.
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