The Green Party and the Liberal Democrats are in talks to build a governing bloc on Birmingham City Council, after elections earlier in the month left no single party in overall control of England's largest local authority. The Greens emerged with 19 seats and the Liberal Democrats with 12, and the two have opened formal discussions about sharing power in a council long dominated by Labour.
The arithmetic of the new chamber has been complicated, and the prospective coalition was strengthened by the formation of a new independent grouping, "Better Birmingham Independents," whose members could lend the bloc additional votes. The fluid alignment reflects a fragmented result in which the established parties lost ground and a patchwork of smaller forces gained the leverage to shape who runs the city.
Birmingham's local government has been through a turbulent period. The council, which serves more than a million residents, has grappled with severe financial pressures in recent years, and the question of how to steady its finances while protecting services will sit at the centre of any governing arrangement that emerges from the talks. Whoever takes charge inherits a daunting budgetary inheritance.
All 101 seats were contested in the elections, held across the city's wards, in a vote that reshaped the political map of a council that has been a Labour stronghold. The scale of the turnover handed smaller parties an unaccustomed prominence and set the stage for the negotiations now under way over the shape of the next administration.
The civic calendar has continued in parallel with the horse-trading. Councillor Zaker Choudhry was recently installed as Lord Mayor of Birmingham, taking up the largely ceremonial role of the city's First Citizen, a reminder that the machinery of local government carries on even as the question of political control remains unresolved.
For residents, the outcome of the coalition talks will determine the priorities of a council that touches daily life across the city, from social care to refuse collection to the upkeep of parks and roads. The negotiations were being watched as a test of whether a multi-party arrangement can deliver stable government in a city that can ill afford further turbulence.