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A meal out, a pint with friends, a trip to the match.

All beginning to be possible again in Liverpool.

The first city region in England to agree to go into and now to come out of England's

toughest coronavirus restrictions.

The way the city cooperated with what is routinely called the evil Tory government has won the

mayor of Liverpool City region Steve Rotherham, constant praise and endless name checks from

Boris Johnson and his ministers, but also inevitably the suspicion of some in Liverpool itself.

The brick-eat-turn politician who served as Jeremy Corbyn's parliamentry aide has become

a household name for reasons that he and those who voted for him would never ever have wanted.

Steve Rotherham, welcome to political thinking.

Thanks, Nick.

Above all I imagine this has been a really emotional testing few weeks for you.

Well, very difficult, very bruising as well because you did introduce it that there's

been praise, well there's probably been praise from the wrong quarters and there's been

lots of criticism from people that I thought would have understood that what we were trying

to do was the right thing and it is something that I'll look back on in future years and

know that what we did has been vindicated by what's happened recently that we saved

lives, undoubtedly our infection rates which were all going in the wrong direction, not

just in the headland figure, 760 pay 100,000 in some of our areas, but it was the way it was

spreading through the demographic and the pressures on our NHS and the ICU and ITU and so

we had to do something and I think we'll look back and realise that something need to

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