00:01Well, I mean, Birmingham is, it will continue to operate. There will still be the services provided, including the bins,
00:11which of course, let's face it, the hope was to get this election out of the way. And dare I
00:17say it, maybe it's still early days, there will be some sort of settlement. There was one, but of course
00:21that was dependent upon the Labour winning a majority and being still in power. Well, of course, you know, that's
00:26completely gone out the window.
00:27So in the sense of the day-to-day services will go on because, of course, they are provided by
00:33the officers who are employed specifically to do that. But of course, they look for direction from the political powers,
00:41the controlling sort of group.
00:43Birmingham City Council has 101 seats, so any group needs 51 councillors for an overall majority.
00:52The local elections on the 7th of May left Reform UK as the largest group in the city with 23
00:59councillors, followed by the Greens on 19, Labour on 17, the Conservatives on 16 and the Liberal Democrats on 12.
01:08Independents also gained 13 councillors, and the Workers' Party gained one. That means no party can run the council alone.
01:18Reform UK says there's no viable route for it to form an administration. The other groups also hold enough seats
01:25between them to shape what happens next.
01:28But there's still no confirmed agreement on who will run Birmingham.
01:32And at the moment, well, traditionally, of course, the controlling group is made up of the party that sort of
01:37wins enough seats to form a majority.
01:39So what we've got is a sort of the chaos, I think, for sort of many days, maybe weeks and
01:46possibly sort of months in sort of extremis.
01:48The difficulty is, as I say, that the services will have to be provided.
01:52But at the same time, there's no direction. So, of course, at some point then, there has to be sort
01:59of something who sets the budget.
02:01So we may have to bring back commissioners, some sort of central government, or they're appointed by central government, in
02:07order to run the authority in the absence of sort of any political direction.
02:10So it's going to be really sort of problematic for quite some sort of time.
02:15But, hey, you know, deals can be done. But, of course, deals are done when there's sufficient willingness and ability
02:21to compromise.
02:21And I suspect that's not going to happen until sort of there's some sort of hardheadness and somebody comes in
02:28and sort of tries to sort of force it.
02:30Difficult. But, hey, this is the sort of the will of sort of people.
02:33They vote in the way that they did. And we get the sort of the political outcome that sort of
02:37emerges.
02:38So we shall see.
02:40For now, the city's services continue.
02:43But the political question remains unresolved.
02:46Who can command enough support in the council chamber to run Britain's second biggest city?
02:53The next full council meeting is due to take place this Tuesday.
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