PEACE and goodwill on earth might have been perfectly acceptable for lowly Shepherds. But heaven preserve such notions of Christian charity where Warrington Labour Party is concerned.

Only a starry-eyed socialist could have failed to detect the barely-concealed animosity between Warrington North MP Helen Jones and the Man Who Would Be King (South of the River) Nick Bent down the years.

But in the true spirit of yuletide (tidings of comfort and joy and all that) these seething comrades have drawn further battlelines around the borough libraries debacle.

Mr Bent claims Mrs Jones, who has refused to meet with LiveWire, is fatally undermining the campaign to safeguard threatened libraries, an accusation which may bear some little weight.

Mrs Jones, for her part, is less than keen to engage with an 'unelected' council agency, accusing them of only being prepared to enter a dialogue after being roasted from one end of town to the other in the early going.

Unlike several occasions previously, it's difficult for Podium not to come down on the sitting MP's side.

LiveWire, and Culture Warrington, like Golden Gates Housing, was created to take an important but costly part of municipal life off the council's books.

Economically this may allow the 'arms-length' offshoot to seek private investment or assistance not normally open to local authorities But the other handy upshot is the parent council can hive off direct responsibility for the inevitable cuts which were always going to roll around for these areas of local government, like everywhere else in the UK for the past decade.

Did Paul Taylor and Emma Hutchinson of LiveWire not fully expect this to happen? You feel sure Prof Broomhead may have given them some small hint at some point.

Several Labour people down the years, way before the current crop of 'loyalists' have spoken privately of how difficult Warrington North's incumbent can be to negotiate with.

But if neither Mr Taylor nor Mrs Hutchinson had the nous to at least run their proposals by either of the town's MPs before they want out to publication then that was naive (and faintly disrespectful) in its own right.

Mrs Jones may be deploying a risk strategy with LiveWire – but if she genuinely believes the proposal for her patch are untenable, it's her inalienable right to stand her ground.

LiveWire went for the nuclear option straight out – cynics may feel any lesser library cuts would then appear more palatable.

Let the negotiation begin. Maybe we'll see a few more councillors crawl out from behind the bookcases before they take a final decision on this abomination.

  •  In no small part, your correspondent is eternally grateful to Mrs Jones and Mr Bent for diverting this column away from an in-depth look at the word of the year – Brexit.

This nightmarish spectre rattled its chains locally again the other day when the former Warrington UKIP chairman Trevor Nicholls confirmed he had quit the ragtag outfit, apparently amid a conflict of views with new leader and professional gobby Scouser Paul Nuttall.

These are the catalysts for the largest constitutional shift in Britain since Oliver Cromwell and his fans were knocking around Warrington.

But still with only a smattering of councillors one turncoat MP and duelling MEPs, these are the white knights who advocated taking us out of Europe.

One thing's for certain, no matter how many, or how few celebrities kick the bucket, 2017, with Trump, May, Le Pen, Boris, Assad and Putin, will never be remembered as dull.