In England there are two very marked social groups: the triumphalists and the defeatists. The former believe that their football or rugby team will always be world champions, and they celebrate victories in an almost insulting way; they see the country as a great power (although the latest OECD analysis places it almost at the level of Argentina); They think that the empire still exists, that Brexit is going to be a success (you just have to give it time) and that the British economy is doing much better than that of the EU (statistics don't count).
Defeatists believe otherwise, and there is a long tradition of defeatism that was expressed in the 19th century, after the Boer Wars and the Suez debacle, with the governments of Balfour, Douglas-Hume, James Callaghan, Harold Wilson, Macmillan , Major and now Rishi Sunak, during the winters of discontent and after Thatcher's destruction of industry... When the American writer Paul Theroux visited the coastal towns of England in 1982 he could hardly describe his horror and was surprised by the negativity from many whom he interviewed: “This country is a disaster, nothing works, we are not going anywhere.”
Now England is once again enveloped in a wave of pessimism, as when it was described as the “sick man of Europe”, and the defeatists seem to have plenty of arguments. The latest example is the bankruptcy of the city of Birmingham, the second in the nation in number of inhabitants and the largest municipal authority in all of Europe, which – to stay afloat – may be forced to sell even its museums and art galleries, its spectacular Central Library (inaugurated only in 2013), mansions such as Ashton Hall and even the furniture.
The case is a mixture of mismanagement by Labor (which has controlled the city council for twelve years), and the impact of the cuts that successive governments (starting with David Cameron's) have imposed in the interests of sacrosanct austerity. Funding for municipal authorities has been reduced by 60% since 2010, and the result is a huge black hole of €2.2 billion.
The budget of the city of Birmingham is 4.2 billion euros (it receives 77.8% less money from London than it did twenty years ago), and one would think that this money would be dedicated to collecting garbage, fixing the holes, illuminating the streets, keeping parks, sports centers and libraries open, cleaning graffiti, paying teachers... But in reality all of that is secondary: the bulk of the funds are spent on social assistance for the elderly, and on care for children with disabilities. issues. These are, by law, the first responsibilities that the municipal authority must attend to, and then, if there is anything left over, the rest comes.
To compensate for the brutal decrease in state resources, city councils invest the money that London gives them. But investments, as we know, can go well and go wrong. Birmingham is not the only one in trouble, and on the list of candidates for bankruptcy in the next two years are Huddersfield, Turrock, Woking, Derby, Stoke and several dozen others. Some have gone bankrupt buying shopping centers, others with solar energy, or whatever.
In Birmingham, the problem has been magnified by hundreds of lawsuits that female civil servants (in charge of cleaning schools and maintaining official buildings) filed years ago for discrimination, for receiving lower salaries than men who performed the same tasks. The city council has already had to pay 1.4 billion euros in compensation, and now it has received a bill for another 900 million that has precipitated bankruptcy. Auditors sent by London have taken charge of the management, and eliminated all expenses except social assistance and a minimum for garbage collection and the like.
For Birmingham, which competes with Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Newcastle for the unofficial title of second-largest English city, this is a humiliation. Just last year it celebrated the Commonwealth Games (on which it spent 200 million euros despite financial problems) and announced the beginning of a “golden decade” with its Michelin star restaurants, the arrival of the high-speed train, its Symphony Orchestra, Central Library and Exhibition Center (which it cannot sell now because it already did so eight years ago, for 325 million euros (to pay compensation to municipal employees). That its main team soccer team, Aston Villa, spending a few years in the second division was not a good sign either...
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has ruled out giving help to Birmingham to cover the budget deficit of one hundred million dollars expected for the current financial year, and double that for 2023-2024. He alleges that in London dogs are not tied with sausages either and that each one is tied to his own. It is the seventh English city to go bankrupt since 2020, and those to come... Inflation is rising, and the central government is giving less and less. Thus there is no town hall that survives. Those who told Paul Theroux in the eighties that the United Kingdom was going down feel vindicated.
