Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Sheilbh]

These are IPP (imprisonment for public protection) sentences and they're an absolute disaster - and, as the current Justice Secretary has said, a stain on the justice system.

They were brought in under New Labour (my guess is something to do with terrorism given that it was early 2000s and David Blunkett was Home Secretary). It basically meant someone could be convicted for a serious crime that didn't carry a whole life sentence, but if the judge assessed that there was serious risk to the public they could be given this sentence which meant they would serve a sentence until the parole board let them out - and could be recalled to prison at any point if they breach their parole conditions.

The Tories and Lib Dems opposed it and abolished them once they were in office in 2012. It seems that ministers at the time thought they were abolishing the sentence and that would mean existing prisoners would get re-sentenced, but it didn't. So there are these legacy prisoners (or people on licence) and there's been growing campaigns to do something because it's clearly wrong and there's about 1,000 prisoners who have served 10 years more than their actual sentence. It looks like the government's preparing something as MPs got a debate on it (some MPs, including the chair of the justice select committee, have been campaigning on it) and, as I say, the Justice Secretary said it's a stain on the justice system and the department are working on a proposal.

[HVC]

I learned two things today. 1) Birmingham is Englands second largest city. 2) they're now bankrupt.

Only catched a blurb. Something about legal liabilities due to being sued for equal pay, but didn't go into detail about the lawsuit beyond it being like 900 mil. What's the deal.

[Sheilbh]

Birmingham is not just the UK's second largest city, but Europe's largest local authority (and youngest city).

I think there's three bits that are probably relevant - one is general and the other two are a bit more Birmingham specific.

The general bit is that there's huge funding pressures on local authorities. Local authorities are responsible for all sorts of things like adult and child social care, bin collection, local road maintenance, public amenities, social housing, housing benefit, homelessness - these are a mix of discretionary items and things that councils are required by national law to do (like child and adult social care). In the UK the vast majority of their revenue comes from central government funding. That was a real target for George Osborne as Chancellor who cut real term funding for local councils by over 50% - this was, in effect, austerity by stealth. From a central government perspective they were spending less but the political decisions and challenges of what services you cut was left to local councils, in general, for obvioius reasons, most councils focused on their statutory duties, particularly children's services. That's bounced back a bit - so you add in other sources of revenue and local government funding fell by about 20% in the 2010s but is now back to 10% below 2010 levels.

That's impacted all local authorities and we've seen increasing numbers of councils including Woking, Slough, Croydon issue a "section 114" notice which means it can't balance its books. It doesn't declare bankruptcy in the sense of writing off debt. It's a  it more like a government shutdown in the US - basically existing spending commitments carry on, statutory requirements (like social care) carry on but all other spending is immediately stopped. Normally the council will then basically pass an emergency budget which may include really broad cuts to non-statutory services. But from the Guardian also includes Croydon's Tory minority council increasing council tax by 15% (with a waiver from he government - as there's a cap on council tax rises to under 5%). Sometimes there's some form of bailout too. Birmingham is the biggest and this is huge. But there are many local councils saying they're in financial distress and close to a secion 114. This is a big city with a Labour council, but Somerset might have a s114 notice and that's very rural and (until last year) solidly Tory for many years.

But there's some local angles too. There's been issues with the local Labour party which runs Birmingham City Council for a while - Labour commissioned an internal report that came back in autumn of last year and reported problems with racism, misogyny and harassment in the Labour council group (including in delivery of services). Earlier this year the National Executive Committee basically forced a leadership change in Labour group on the council forcing out the local party leader, saying there was "a legacy of years of personality driven factionalism, cultural challenges, two particularly bitter industrial disputes, a recent divisive leadership contest and changes to governance." The report to the central party also recommended that the local Labour councillors should "strive for more openness and transparency" needs to "routinely develop an equalities perspective on how it operates and is perceived" and recommended that the central party should "reinforce" national codes of conduct on "sexual harassment and gender discrimination; antisemitism and other forms of racism; Islamophobia; and Afrophobia and anti-Black racism."

I don't know the details beyond how that report was covered but the defence of the former leader focused on Birmingham hosting the Commonwealth Games last summer. He talked a lot about that launching a "golden decade" and lots of multi-billion redevelopment opportunities - which as someone from Liverpool immediately has me thinking of no longer criminally charged former Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson. I could be wrong but taken with the comments from the report and it sounds an awful lot like old school, local boss city politics.

Relatedly is the two other specifically Birmingham angles. One is that unions representing women who worked for the council brought an equal pay claim successfully (this is part of the two bitter industrial disputes). It went on for a very long time and ended up going to the Supreme Court, the union is taking other councils to court over this as there's about 20 councils they think that discriminated on the basis of sex but have said "Birmingham are exceptionally poor". So far the council has already paid out £1.1 billion to female workers and still has a liability of up to £750 million outstanding. It's accruing at a rate of £5-15 million a month. For context, the cuts to Birmingham's funding from central government in the entire 2010s was about £1 billion. The other bit is Birmingham bought an Oracle system doing standard Oracle things like payments, finance, HR on cloud - when the new council leader came in he immediately announced that the system which was supposed to cost £19 million was now likely to cost £100 million, and it's already three years late.

So I think it's bit of a perfect storm of long term cuts of central government financing, plus really dysfunctional local politics/local Labour party culture - it sounds like the former leader was basically an old school local boss.

[Valmy]

Youngest? The internet says Birmingham was founded in 1166.

But maybe that is a baby by Euro standards.

[Josquius]

Birmingham as second largest is highly debatable.
The most sensible way of looking at it IMO is in terms of urban area and Manchester is second there.

And yes. The government's cuts to local authorities have been horrific. It's a win win for the tories. They get to slash the budget and they also get to pass the blame for this onto labour.
At the last local elections in large part due to this as the core reason Labour lost county Durham - resulting in decisions that can only be called populist idiocy.

[Zanza]

Youngest? The internet says Birmingham was founded in 1166.

But maybe that is a baby by Euro standards.

Surely Sheilbh means population not foundation.

[Sheilbh]

Birmingham as second largest is highly debatable.
The most sensible way of looking at it IMO is in terms of urban area and Manchester is second there.

Although only just as the equivalent to Greater Manchester is the West Midlands.

At the last local elections in large part due to this as the core reason Labour lost county Durham - resulting in decisions that can only be called populist idiocy.

Also smart local politics - the Tories are in an "anyone but Labour" rainbow coalition with a Lib Dem council leader, but also including the Greens, local independents etc. Which is probably always inevitable eventually if a party dominates for 100 years

Surely Sheilbh means population not foundation.

Yeah. I think the average age is about 30 which I remember reading somewhere is the youngest city in Europe.

Edit: Although I should declare an interest in all this - I think local government is really important and the decline of local press is the biggest problem for our democracy in terms of the media. I think there are stories and scandals and lessons at the local level of government that are just not getting reported until there's a disaster which justifies national coverage. And I am kind of fascinated by the (generally Labour) history of machine political bosses in Britain cities: the Braddocks, Joe Anderson, T Dan Smith and maybe Ian Ward by the sounds of it. I know Jos generally thinks it's all populist nonsense but I really think if you want to see where there's corruption - I suspect you'd see most in local government: revolving doors from planning committees to property developers, contracts awarded to family friends etc, precisely because the local press has died

Although I'm possibly also interested just because I'm from Liverpool. Which was locally the most Tory city in the country and ended with a Trotskyist council leadership (only other one I can think of is maybe Ted Knight in Lambeth - down the road). Those internal fights in Liverpool still causes rows (my parents have family friends where they just can't talk about politics because of the fights from the 80s) and has an impact on the city's politics. So I think there's really interesting stories there too - T Dan Smith is another great example.

Edit: And those council leaderships really mattered and defined those cities for good and bad for decades - as in his own say did, say, Sir Richard Leese in Manchester.

[Sheilbh]

Separately very striking red wall poll - Labour now lead as most trusted on every single issue:


Tories should be absolutely furious at winning the first working majority since 1992 (and best result in decades) with a potential generational political re-alignment - and pissing it all up the wall in less than a single term

Now it feels like Labour will get the chance of a potentially massive re-alignment - and they better not fuck this up

Separately - slightly baffled that they're still asing about covid. I assume it's so they have consistent data across this parliament but seems a bit weird.

[HVC]

Thanks sheilbh.  That's a lot of money in under payment.

[Sheilbh]

Yep. Years of under-paying traditionally women dominated sectors like care workers, caterers, teaching assistants in comparison with similarly male dominated roles with similar qualification/skill requirements. Plus the male dominated roles also had lots more perks: more time off, bonuses etc. Lots of workers for many years in a local authority serving over a million residents.

Unions are also pursuing a similar claim against the big supermarkets basically comparing pay and benefits for (traditionally male) distribution v (traditionally female) shop assistants. If that's successful then I think it's be an even bigger payout. And I think it is right so hope it is successful.

[Tonitrus]

Separately very striking red wall poll - Labour now lead as most trusted on every single issue:

Somewhat surprised they didn't have a question specifically on Brexit/EU relations. 

[Admiral Yi]

Yep. Years of under-paying traditionally women dominated sectors like care workers, caterers, teaching assistants in comparison with similarly male dominated roles with similar qualification/skill requirements. Plus the male dominated roles also had lots more perks: more time off, bonuses etc. Lots of workers for many years in a local authority serving over a million residents.

Why didn't women move over to the higher paying male dominated jobs?

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm very suspicious about this "Birmingham is the largest local authority in Europe" claim 

Paris, for example, the one of the arrondissements, has a lot more people and is both a commune and a department administered by a common council. Even Kent county council has a larger population to administer than Birmingham council; though I suppose the argument there is that there are lesser councils underneath the county level.

[Josquius]

Although only just as the equivalent to Greater Manchester is the West Midlands.

Yes. In terms of size.
Manchester has importance putting it a few notches up as the biggest city in the north vs second in the south.

Also smart local politics - the Tories are in an "anyone but Labour" rainbow coalition with a Lib Dem council leader, but also including the Greens, local independents etc. Which is probably always inevitable eventually if a party dominates for 100 years

Lib dems yes. Hadn't noticed any greens. The independents... They're "independent" in name only. Really being a collection of shy tories and blukippers. Pure populist scum bags

And yes. Clever politics to do what they did. But no less despicable for it.
Core reason I could never go into politics. I don't give a shit about power and winning for winnings sake. I see it as the duty of governments to do the smart thing and what is best for the country, not stupid shit that they can get to appeal to a few idiots as happened in Durham..

[Tamas]

Separately very striking red wall poll - Labour now lead as most trusted on every single issue:

Somewhat surprised they didn't have a question specifically on Brexit/EU relations. 

Shhh. We don't talk about that.