I HAVE been saying since I came back into the council last year that it wasn’t going to be long before we saw a council going bust in this country. Sometimes I really don’t like being right.

The awful news this week

that effectively Birmingham

City Council went bankrupt is another stark warning that local authorities need to reassess our financial stability.

The challenges faced by Birmingham are certainly sobering. A deficit that has run into hundreds of millions of pounds, cuts to essential services, and a community struggling to reconcile with its local government’s financial imprudence. Remind you of anywhere?

The reality is that Glasgow is also on the edge of a fiscal cliff. The ever-increasing demands on housing, public transport, healthcare, and social services are stretching our coffers to an alarming degree.

I speak repeatedly about

the awful statistic that sees our city’s children being the most impoverished in Scotland and our drug death rate the highest in Europe. What does that all come down to in the end? Money and let’s be blunt here the persistent issue of funding gaps has made our situation ever more precarious.

So, what is the reality of Humza Yousaf and the SNP Government doing anything to address this?

Despite ongoing discussions and negotiations over funding for local governments, the commitments have fallen far short of the actual financial realities faced by our city.

For far too long, the relationship between Holyrood and local councils, particularly Glasgow, has been one of strained expectations.

Gaslighting and raising expectations time and time again, only to let the country’s biggest city down.

It is time that the First Minister actually addressed this – the current financial agreements and expectations set upon local governments like Glasgow are not just unsustainable, but they are also unrealistic.

Given the financial tightrope that we are walking, any reduction in funding or failure to increase it in line with actual needs will only push us further into further fiscal uncertainty, much like what Birmingham is going through.

But let’s not make this merely a question of pounds and pence. This is about the future of Glasgow, about the well-being of our citizens, and about maintaining the trust that people have in their local governments. As it stands, Glasgow has been expected to perform a myriad of miracles with financial constraints

that make such endeavours not just challenging

but also risky.

The time has come to reset the relationship with Holyrood. We need an open dialogue, free from political manoeuvring and full of practical problem-solving.

We need financial commitments that are not just theoretical numbers on a spreadsheet but actual investments into our city’s infrastructure, public services, and people.

Failure to address these issues is not just a political misstep; it is a betrayal of the people who put their trust in their elected leaders to govern wisely. It’s a betrayal of the promise of a better, more sustainable future that every citizen looks forward to. It’s a betrayal of our children.

We hope that Birmingham’s dire straits serve as a wake-up call for us to act now before Glasgow becomes another sad headline in the history of local government failures.

As we draw lessons from Birmingham’s predicament, let’s not be bystanders in our own story. We urge Humza to take immediate steps to rectify this situation. The fabric of Glasgow’s society and the stability of its future hangs in the balance.

The bell tolls for us, and it is high time we answered it.