Saba Salman

And now that's being fractured, we are getting councils that are hung, councils that are minority administration, which may be led nominally by Labour or Lib Dem, but really it's by a few seats.

And that makes it really difficult for decisions to get through, for budgets to be set.

everything just becomes harder to find agreement on.

So technically it should be better because you're not following the party line, that's not an agenda.

But the nuts and bolts of getting things done essentially is harder.

Yeah, yeah.

Exactly.

And Birmingham, to take that example, I mean, I think there's about 45 just 45 councils due to exchange hands in the next elections, May 7th.

But to go back to Birmingham, that's an interesting one.

So Kemi Bedlock went down to Birmingham and made it known that she would not oppose a conservative reform coalition locally, not nationally.

And Unite the Union, which is obviously involved in the bin strikes.

So for the last year, we've had the strikes over refuse workers.

Unite the Union has had secret talks with reform.

Blimey.

Yeah.

So it's all kicking off.

I can't see how.

The whole backdrop of the row over the bin workers, there's an equal pay row as well.

So some sort of 700 million.

The council declared effective bankruptcy back in 2023.