In delivering the annual Lunar Society lecture, Lord Adonis reminded us of some timely, but highly uncomfortable, facts about the state of Birmingham in 2011.
His wide ranging examination of the city’s many problems – above average unemployment, low workforce skills, under-achieving schools, deprivation, poor public transport – cut a stark contrast to attempts by the city council and business leaders to promote Birmingham as a leading global city.
Clearly, no one would expect the council to concentrate on doom and gloom week after week. There is a matter of honesty about the challenging social and economic plight we find ourselves in, but it will do no good to wallow in self pity by talking Birmingham down unfairly.
READ MORE: {}
Having said that, Lord Adonis bleakly rehearsed the issues that appear to have defeated this city’s political leaders in recent years, with neither the Labour administration in power from the mid-1980s to 2004, or today’s Tory-Lib Dem coalition, being able to make much headway where it matters.
Birmingham is at the top or close to the top of several league tables. Sadly, these are leagues denoting serial under-achievement.
Inner city unemployment is among the highest in the country, a fifth of the city’s residents have low skills, infant mortality is twice the national average, and the 海角视频’s second largest city can only creep in at 89th place as far as income per head for cities across the world is concerned.
Much of Lord Adonis’s lecture was taken up with an overdue attack on the standard of state education in Birmingham, something which the city council has been in a state of denial about for many years. Whether Lord Adonis’s belief in academies is justified or not – it is too soon to tell whether they really are making a difference – his assessment of under-performing schools is borne out by the facts. If the privileged grammar schools are taken out of the equation, half of state secondary schools are not achieving decent leaving qualifications for students, a matter that should be of great concern to everyone.
Lord Adonis took great care to insist that his call for Birmingham to raise its game significantly in terms of leadership should not be taken as an attack on individuals. That’s not how it is seen in the Council House, where Tory and Lib Dem politicians are seething at Adonis’s exposure of Birmingham’s weaknesses, so much so that deputy council leader Paul Tilsley made a clumsy attempt to stop the speech from being delivered.
Most Read
According to Lord Adonis, Birmingham must get itself a city mayor in the style of Boris Johnson who will be able to drive forward brilliant strategic leadership. Second, the mayor must launch a relentless campaign to bring high speed rail to Birmingham since this will, it is claimed, be the salvation of the city’s economic woes.
This newspaper believes that a city the size and importance of Birmingham needs strong and decisive leadership, and that a mayoral system is more likely to deliver that than the existing arrangements where power is diluted among cabinet members.
When the Localism Bill passes into law at the end of this year, the leader of Birmingham City Council will become Shadow Mayor. The first mayoral election is scheduled for May 2013.
But, as things stand, Boris-type candidates are hardly beating a path to our doors, unless of course Lord Adonis’s speech was an opening gambit for his mayoral campaign?