Can Labour hold on to power in Birmingham despite bin strikes and bank

Birmingham has been a Labour city for the past 14 years – but come 7 May, that could all change.

A difficult national backdrop, with the party slumping in the national polls, has collided with a unique set of circumstances in Birmingham – where bin strikes and bankruptcy have created a picture of a city in decline.

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Rubbish still lines the streets of the inner wards of this city. Children play in debris, and residents despair at the level of fly-tipping in some areas – with warnings against doing this often ignored.

One man I spoke to told me how he erected a fence around a pile of rubbish that was building up to stop it overflowing into the roads. People complained of multiple residents living in one home – houses of multiple occupation – as a reason why rubbish was accumulating at such a rapid pace.

I was shocked that these were the streets of Britain’s second city and that people were living in these conditions.

One resident in the Alum Rock area of the city – where the bin issue is particularly acute – told us about the scale of the problems on his road.

“The street is disgusting now,” he said.

“Look at the bins. There is drug dealing everywhere in our road. There is a parking problem; our children can’t walk – they hold their noses when they are walking.”