For the first time in recent memory the City Council’s annual budget meeting was not greeted with hoards of protests, staff unions on the streets waving placards or members of various left wing groups calling for spending to be maintained even it means running an illegal deficit.
It was on stark contrast to last year when the homeless charities staged a series of high-profile protests before having threatened cuts reduced.
The museums and arts groups lobbied over cuts to subsidies and various residents groups saw off a threat to get rid of the city’s park keepers.
Previously the council funded lollipop ladies (and men) have battled their own extinction, library groups have fought to keep the doors open and even a youth club in Alum Rock raised a 15,000 name petition in support.
We have also seen activists storm the barricades - and on one memorable occasion jump them - to bring the budget meeting to a standstill while chanting ‘shame on you’ to the ruling Labour group for implementing cuts.
Without the protests the council budget meeting is a familiar dance of Labour councillors blaming Tory Government austerity, Conservative councillors blaming the Labour run council’s financial incompetence - and there has been more than an element of truth about both. The Lib Dems have the luxury of being able to blame both the Tories and Labour for any bad news.
But that doesn’t explain why the wider protest movement have given up.
It’s not as if the cuts were any less brutal this year and in other parts of the country councils of all political persuasions have been throwing their hands up in horror at the fact they are struggling to afford even basic services. The problem is particularly acute in adult social care where Governments have failed to deal with the problem of rising costs and demand while reducing grant funding.
Some suggested the lack of protest in Birmingham was because the Beast from the East and indeed the chilly weather since the start of December has cooled passions. Others speculated that after eight years of brutal local Government cuts an element of fatigue had set in.
And a conspiracy theory is that the anti-cuts anti-austerity brigade are now, as the party is seen as in the ascendency under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, unwilling to turn their fire on Labour’s largest local council.
What is certain is that this was a vanilla budget - lacking in controversy and where cuts do occur - such as through reorganisation of care services - the impact is simply unclear at this stage. The only significant new announcement was the lifting of charges for children’s funerals.
Other cuts had been announced in previous years - for example the overhaul of the bins service which led to last year’s strike action - but the savings only arriving during this financial year.
The opposition picked up on this accusing the Labour leadership of being ‘tired’ and ‘feeble’ and lacking ambition. Rather than criticising the loss of vital services they turned their attention to how much more they would do - restore free garden waste collections, give council staff a bonus scheme, buy more cctv inspectors to catch the fly-tippers and build a new temporary accommodation for the homeless were among the alternative suggestions.
Of course the over riding reason for Labour’s caution was simply that this year Birmingham will have elections unlike any seen in a long time.
All 101 council seats are up for grabs on May 3, not the usual 40, and what’s more they are being contested in new wards with new boundaries. The next election, barring by-elections, will not be until 2022.
Even though Labour are clearly the bookies favourites to retain control of council, many individual councillors are nervous entering this uncharted territory and our budget reflected that.
