Ainsdale Tory councillor Terry Jones (above. left) has clashed with Sefton’s Labour boss Ian Maher (right) in this week’s Council meeting when the Ainsdale Conservative raised the changes brought in this year to politicise the annual Remembrance Services.

Councillor Jones had put down a formal question to the Council Leader asking for a small working party to look at how these ceremonies are run. But Councillor Ian Maher was having nothing of it and slapped him down, denying that there was any partisan element in the public wreath-laying ceremony.

Decades of tradition were thrown in the bin this year when Sefton insisted on putting Labour councillors at the head of the Southport Armistice Day procession. Until this year, the councillors had always lined up purely on their own seniority of election, regardless of political party. Every year, Councillors of different parties had previously marched side by side from Town Hall to the Cenotaph just as soldiers of different politics fought side by side in the trenches.