Last year three councils in England went bust, and the BBC political research unit has reported that one in five councils have warned of effective bankruptcy in five years, unless there is reform. Contributing editor Tom Clark joins Ellen Halliday to unpick the deficit in local government funding, and to the chart the sorry course of Birmingham, a city that was once the cradle of municipal governance, which is now run by a bankrupt council that is forced to make unprecedented cuts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.