Make Liverpool the capital, MP suggests

Liverpool as nominee for European Capital of Culture may not be enough for some. Now the Scousers appear to be leapfrogging the culture bit with an MP's proposal that the city take over from London as the capital.

Liverpool as nominee for European Capital of Culture may not be enough for some. Now the Scousers appear to be leapfrogging the culture bit with an MP's proposal that the city take over from London as the capital.

An astonished House of Commons discussed a proposal yesterday to move the nation's political epicentre from the Thames to the Mersey.

A Plaid Cymru MP called on the Government to make Liverpool the capital of the UK, saying it was in the interests of inner-city regeneration – and cooling the property prices and traffic-fumes of the metropolis.

Adam Price, MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, said in a debate on regional economic policy that the move would help regenerate one of the country's poorest areas. "London is the administrative capital, the financial capital, the media capital and the corporate capital," he said. "London is draining the brains out of the rest of Britain."

He said the UK should follow the example of many other countries which had their capitals outside their largest cities. The move would reverse the North-South economic gap which has been widening since the 1970s.

The City would remain Britain's financial capital but MPs, peers and civil servants would go north.

"The Treasury could do its bit and relocate itself in Bootle," Mr Price said.

"And what better way to enshrine the independence of the Bank of England than sending it to Newcastle."

Liverpool has many of the qualities required for a capital. Its residents already possess a certain metropolitan arrogance and its streets contain a greater ratio of Grade I listed buildings than any other UK city – the only pity, as one travel writer observed, is that they stand like fine antiques in a tatty old junk shop. The city has nine of the 20 poorest postcodes in the UK.

Mr Price said: "Moving the capital would signal unequivocally that government takes the north-south divide seriously." Which is more than his fellow MPs do for Mr Price. His proposal fell yesterday at the first hurdle.

Our Friend in the North, Review Section