Angela Rayner is facing backlash after pointing the finger at the previous Tory government for the escalating bin strike chaos in Birmingham. The Deputy Prime Minister claimed it was Conservative mismanagement that pushed the Labour-led Birmingham City Council to bankruptcy in 2023, which she argues is at the root of the current crisis.
But not everyone’s buying it. Tory MP Andrew Mitchell, who represents Sutton Coldfield in the city, didn’t hold back in his response. “If Angela thinks that Labour Birmingham’s bin strike is the fault of the Tories, she must be smoking something,” he said bluntly.
Mitchell hit out at the “awful” state of the city’s streets, describing the strike as a disaster for his constituents. “The awful Birmingham bin strike is imposing the most dreadful difficulties on my constituents in Royal Sutton Coldfield and across Birmingham,” he said. “It is a dispute between two wings of the Labour Party and is wholly owned misery courtesy of the Birmingham Labour Party.”
The row comes as the city’s bin workers, represented by the Unite union, stage an all-out strike over the scrapping of waste collection and recycling officer roles. The result? Overflowing bins, rubbish dumped in the streets, and rat sightings becoming all too common for locals. Earlier this week, the local authority even declared a major incident because of the mounting public health concerns.
Rayner, who also serves as Housing Secretary, defended her stance on BBC Radio 2, saying: “The bin collection in Birmingham is a wider and bigger issue, because under the previous government, Birmingham council went bust.”
She insisted the current Labour government has stepped in to help: “We’ve given Birmingham extra cash to support the difficult circumstances that they’re in and they’re taking action to tackle the longstanding equal pay claims that Birmingham council had.”
Rayner laid the blame squarely on austerity-era cuts, arguing the council had been starved of funding for years. “They had over 10 years of austerity, they saw significant sums, billions of pounds, taken out of their budget and were not able to provide the most necessary of services,” she said.
“So we’re taking action to put local government on a better financial stabilisation after the 14 years of disaster that we’ve had,” she added.
But with residents furious about the stink and mess on their streets—and no resolution in sight—many aren’t interested in political finger-pointing. What they want is simple: someone to take responsibility and get the bins emptied.
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