Five Versions of the Truth, One Mountain of Rubbish
Five stories, one bin strike, and Birmingham still waiting for someone to take the rubbish away.
Birmingham’s Bin Strike: Is Coun John Cotton Still the Leader, and Is There Even a Deal?
There are political farces, and then there is Birmingham. For more than a year, Britain’s second city has looked like the opening scene of a low-budget post-apocalypse film. Black bags stacked like defensive fortifications, foxes holding midnight strategy meetings, and rats so large they look like they should be standing for council themselves. Residents are left wondering whether “weekly collection” is now considered a charming historical tradition rather than an actual public service.
And now, just as voters prepare to head to the ballot box, we are told the bin strike is over. Except it isn’t. Or perhaps it is. Or perhaps it will be, provided Labour wins the election, the Cabinet agrees, the statutory officers sign it off, the lawyers survive reading it, and equal pay law does not send the whole thing into financial orbit. Birmingham politics, as ever, has entered its most natural state: complete absurdity.
At the centre of it all stands Coun John Cotton, a man who may or may not be the Leader of Birmingham City Council depending entirely on which sentence you happen to be reading. Technically, he is still leader. Politically, he suffered the rather undignified experience of losing a vote of no confidence in March, a public humiliation wrapped in the polite language of procedure. The opposition declared he had been effectively removed. Labour replied that the vote was merely “symbolic” and that he remained firmly in charge.
What makes this even more remarkable is that even Coun Cotton himself is not actually saying the strike is over. His own language is far more cautious than the victory parade currently being staged elsewhere. He says a negotiated settlement is now “within sight.” He says an improved offer has been found. He says final approval cannot happen before 7 May because of pre-election restrictions. He says that a re-elected Labour administration under his leadership will get it approved afterwards. In plain English, that means there is no final deal. Not yet.
That detail matters because Unite the Union is telling members something entirely different. Their message is not cautious, it is triumphant. “Today is a day we won’t forget.” “Finally, a fair deal is on the table.” “They said it couldn’t be done and we just did it.” This is not the language of a negotiation still crawling through committee structures. This is the language of victory, the sort usually accompanied by banners, speeches, and someone dramatically holding a megaphone in the rain.
What makes this even more damaging is that Birmingham is now operating under five competing versions of reality, and one of them ought to be true.
Unite — the workers have won, the fair deal is on the table, and the strike has effectively reached victory.
Coun John Cotton / Labour leadership — a settlement is within sight, an improved offer exists, but formal approval must wait until after the election. In other words, close, but not done.
Coun Majid Mahmood, Labour’s cabinet member in charge of waste services — caution, and in earlier exchanges a direct pushback against Unite’s “ballpark deal” language with the blunt line: “We’ve never actually made that offer.” That is not opposition spin, that is Labour correcting Labour.
Conservatives — if there is a deal, it risks becoming another equal pay disaster and another massive bill for taxpayers, repeating the mistakes that helped drive Birmingham towards effective bankruptcy.
Liberal Democrats — there is no lawful deal at all because senior officers and Cabinet have not approved one, making the entire announcement little more than pre-election theatre.
That is the real story. Not one city, but five competing versions of reality, all standing next to the same overflowing wheelie bin.
Unite says victory.
Coun Cotton says nearly.
Coun Majid says careful.
The Tories say dangerous.
The Lib Dems say fiction.
And Birmingham residents say: can somebody please just empty the bins.
Because this strike did not begin yesterday. It has dragged on for fifteen months. Fifteen months of rubbish piling up, recycling abandoned, garden waste quietly disappearing from public memory, and the basic dignity of living in a functioning city slowly decomposing along with the contents of the black bags. How does a city the size of Birmingham reach a point where bin collection becomes an unresolved constitutional mystery? How does a council spend over a year arguing about whether a deal exists while residents are simply asking for someone to remove the smell from outside the front gate?
The answer, as usual, is that local government has perfected the rare art of making incompetence look like strategy. If the deal is real, show it. If it is lawful, approve it. If it is not lawful, stop pretending it is. And if Coun John Cotton is still the leader, then lead. Because right now Birmingham does not look like a city being governed. It looks like a city being managed by a WhatsApp group that muted itself six months ago and hoped the problem would quietly compost itself.
This election will sharpen everything. Labour says it is fixing the problem. The opposition says Labour created it. Unite says victory is here. Residents say the bins still have not been emptied. Frankly, the residents may have the strongest argument of all. Because until the rubbish disappears from the streets, all the rest is just another load of old rubbish.
P.S. For those wondering about the “Schrödinger’s Council Leader” line: it refers to Erwin Schrödinger, the physicist famous for the thought experiment known as Schrödinger’s Cat. The idea was that, until you open the box and look, the cat is theoretically both alive and dead at the same time. In Birmingham’s case, Coun John Cotton is politically in much the same position. He lost a vote of no confidence, so many say he is finished. Labour says he remains leader, so officially he is still there. Until someone finally opens the political box, he is both gone and not gone at once: Birmingham’s very own Schrödinger’s Council Leader.