In the 1890s, a visiting American journalist described Birmingham as “the best-governed city in the world”. Inspired by the reforming spirit of its one-time mayor Joseph Chamberlain, England’s second city had become a showcase for a new kind of municipal government. Introducing better schools, libraries, parks and public baths, politicians were taking proactive responsibility for the health and welfare of the local population.
Preachers of what was then known as the “civic gospel” are thin on the ground these days. Birmingham is currently a byword for political dysfunction, symbolised by the unhealthy piles of bin bags disfiguring its streets since an indefinite refuse workers’ strike began last month. Despite pressure from the deputy prime minister, Angela Rayner, who sat down with Unite representatives last weekend, the union and Birmingham’s Labour-run city council have now been in full-blown confrontation for close to six weeks. The impact has been particularly gruesome in poorer areas, where residents cannot afford the costs of commercial waste clearance.
Desperate to finally score some political points after months of lacklustre leadership by Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative party and right-leaning media have been making a drama out of a crisis. Visiting Handsworth, Mrs Badenoch’s cabinet colleague/rival Robert Jenrick portrayed the mounting rubbish as symptomatic of a national malaise. GB News has launched a campaign to “Stop trashing Britain”. The reality is somewhat less apocalyptic, and far more specific to a city that has endured a perfect storm of maladministration.
The proximate cause of the strike is an attempt by councillors to cut bin service costs by reducing the number of workers and – in some cases – their pay rates. But the origins of the mess go back to the disastrously expensive failure of a new software system introduced by the council, and a landmark equal pay settlement which left it liable for payouts totalling hundreds of millions of pounds. Having declared effective bankruptcy in 2023, councillors have substantially hiked council tax while cutting services to the bone.
The 1.1 million or so residents in the United Kingdom’s largest unitary authority are thus receiving the rawest of raw deals. The government has urged Unite to accept the latest council offer aimed at ending the dispute, which includes a commitment to redeployment and a voluntary redundancy scheme. But modestly paid key workers should not be asked to pay the price for a fiscal crisis not of their making. Unite’s proposal that the city council’s huge debt should be restructured – allowing at least a softer version of austerity going forward – would offer a better solution if Westminster were willing to listen.
More broadly, although Birmingham’s predicament is in part sui generis, Labour would be wise to draw some wider lessons. Across England, savage Conservative cuts during the 2010s left local government underresourced and cruelly overstretched. Rachel Reeves’s autumn budget provided very limited temporary relief, but the Local Government Association has predicted an £8.4bn funding gap by 2028‑29. Birmingham’s tipping point arrived in 2023. Without a realistic national funding settlement for the medium term, the dismal scenes playing out on its streets this spring may be repeated elsewhere. After positioning itself as a government committed above all to “delivery”, Labour cannot afford to let that happen.
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