Suddenly it's all the Bs: Budget, Brexit and Birmingham

The prime minister claimed austerity is over

'People need to know the end is in sight'

That's what Theresa May told the Conservative Party Conference three weeks ago.

But the end of what, exactly?

Strictly Come Dancing? The Brexit negotiations? (Oh, don't be silly.....) The World?

Oh yes: Austerity.

"Austerity is over," she said in Birmingham.

But is austerity over in Birmingham?

The city council's Labour leader Ian Ward certainly doesn't think so.

He told us recently: "The reality is that cuts to vital services are far from over and the people of Birmingham have had enough. After already losing £650m from our annual budget, the council faces further cuts of £123m over the next three years."

Ian Ward is the Labour leader of Britain's largest local authority

Birmingham is of course an extreme case.

It's Britain's biggest local authority by far and its well-documented financial challenges are on a scale which is all of its own.

But the challenges facing all our cash-strapped local authorities were summed up with admirable brevity and precision recently by the Conservative leader of Worcestershire County Council, Simon Geraghty.

His biggest pressures were what he called "demand-led national services like adult social care".

He had clearly chosen his words carefully.

Social care is a statutory responsibility. This makes it compulsory for councils to deliver it.

"Demand-led" leaves them with no option but to respond to the increasingly expensive demands of an ageing population in terms defined by a level of statutory regulation which must look to council leaders like a national service delivered by local authorities.

W-words and B-words

Chancellor Philip Hammond has brought his statement forward from the more normal time towards the middle or end of November

Ministers say they are enabling local authorities to raise more of their own revenue, by keeping the proceeds of local business rates for example.

Mrs May's conference speech also promised to scrap the borrowing cap for councils wanting to build new homes.

Birmingham's Conservative opposition leader Robert Alden told me this was "very good news for local government".

But the hard reality facing councils is that those of them who provide the most-needed local services to deprived communities usually have the fewest revenue-raising opportunities.

This is often presented in terms of "all the Ws": Walsall and Wolverhampton; Windsor and Wokingham on the other.

Walsall's Conservative council leader Mike Bird said recently: "We've picked the low-hanging fruit, we've thinned the branches and now we're chopping trees down."

But the biggest buzz-words are the B-words.

Long battle

Budget Day next Monday (29 October) is when the Birminghams of this world will look for clues that the end of austerity may indeed be in sight.

But its timing has been decided by our biggest B-word of all.

Yes, there's no getting away from it: Brexit.

It appears the Chancellor Philip Hammond had to battle long and hard with his Treasury mandarins to bring his statement forward from the more normal time towards the middle or end of November.

This year's October date is an acknowledgement the government's financial decisions must be set out before the conclusion of any Brexit deal.

Mr Hammond has spoken in the past about retaining what he called "the fiscal fire-power" to cope with a "no-deal" result.

Conversely, over the weekend, he hinted he would have scope to be much more generous in the event of a deal being secured.

So now we know.

The prospects for the Budget, Brexit and, yes, Birmingham are all inextricably intertwined.

War games

Birmingham council needs to save £88m from its budget for the coming financial year, affecting services across the city

Just imagine the pressures piling up within the city's ruling Labour group, currently war-gaming various scenarios aimed at saving the required £88m from the budget for the coming financial year alone.

It's not just Mr Hammond who has a budget to prepare.

We hear the mood behind the Council House's closed doors is already turning ugly as calls of "we can't cut this" meet with counter-calls of "if not that, then what?"

On the eve of the Budget, Sunday Politics Midlands will have an intriguing assortment of threads to draw together.

Joining me in the studio will be the Conservative leader of Warwickshire County Council Izzy Seccombe and the Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield, Richard Burden.

Expect plenty of B-words and W-words. While minding our Ps and Qs of course.

Sunday Politics Midlands is at 11.00 GMT on BBC One this Sunday morning (28 October 2018).