In a week in which the nation’s eyeballs have been fixed on the wonky sleeve of a royal cardigan, the news of the effective bankruptcy of Britain’s second city and Europe’s largest council area has passed largely unremarked.

That seems to be the case even in my home city of Birmingham itself. When the council was voting in unprecedented £149m cuts to its budget, slashing children’s services and adult social care and libraries, completely removing arts funding, a protest was planned outside the city council house, once the stage for Britain’s greatest-ever civic reformer, Joseph Chamberlain. Fewer than a hundred people turned up.

The website Birmingham Live, the digital version of the Birmingham Mail, has been questioning that apathy in the past few days, comparing the numbers with the 100,000 who marched to try to save the Longbridge car plant 20 years ago. Jane Haynes, its politics and........

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