Local government correspondent Neil Elkes finds Birmingham City Council leader Mike Whitby carrying on regardless, despite facing a threat to kick him out of office .

Julius Caesar was the great Roman tyrant executed by his own political generals for behaving like a king.

So Mike Whitby, who enjoys historical comparisons, could not have been more clear if he had donned a toga and laurels while commenting that he had spent the weekend watching the BBC drama Rome.

It was one of several light-hearted references to his current political difficulties the Conservative council leader made in a stunning performance at the often-ignored Council Business Management Committee.

While discussing some tediously detailed changes to council standing orders, he piped up: “I spent my Bank Holiday weekend watching Rome.”

This aside initially threw the assembled senior councillors and council officials – until deputy leader Paul Tilsley, sniggered and said ‘et tu, Brute’, and the penny dropped.

Only by adding, “infamy, infamy they’ve all got it in for me” could he have got a bigger laugh.

Now it all became clear, Whitby the glorious leader who has triumphantly lead Birmingham City Council in recent years has, like Caesar, been betrayed by some of those closest to him.

A significant number of his backbenchers are revolting. They feel ignored and often find grand schemes, such as the Municipal Bank, Library of Birmingham and £20?million loan to Warwickshire Cricket Club, announced on the pages of the Birmingham Post and Mail before they have been consulted.

“He behaves like a tyrant,” they say and having found their leadership candidate, Deputy Lord Mayor Randal Brew, they want Whitby to face his own Ides of May. That is the 18th, the night of the challenge. Brew has pledged to restore democracy to the senate – or ‘an inclusive open door policy’.

Luckily for Whitby, Coun Brew, who has been spotted on the spectators’ benches at Cabinet meetings recently, was away on official duty at HMS Daring in Portsmouth. So he was, Labour opposition aside, among friends at the Business Management meeting.

A bright and breezy Whitby said: “I’m enjoying myself, whatever people think,” he told Labour deputy leader Ian Ward as the committee assembled.

At another stage a councillor, making a point about training, stumbled over his words: “New councillors should be, should be...”

“...taken out and shot?”, finished Mike to much amusement. Was this a reference to the ‘boys’, that group of young, recently-elected Conservative backbenchers who have been most vocally critical of their leader?

Outside the meeting Whitby denied these quips had any such significance. “The Anglo-Saxon language (I think he means English) is wonderful and can be taken many ways but these things were said in the context of Council Business Management Committee, nothing else.”

By contrast, his response to direct questions on the challenge, while running to several pages of hastily scribbled notes, was essentially ‘no comment’.

“People can say what they want in the press, but there have been no applications. I am not going to comment on something until I know what the situation is,” he said.

So as yet Brew’s challenge remains officially unanswered.