Now I know Birmingham is not particularly known as a centre for international diplomacy and we don’t exactly have the United Nations congress taking place in the middle of Birmingham Council House, but over the years we have had our fair share in the political spotlight.
Possibly our biggest event was the G8 Economic Summit of May 15th 1998 when President Bill Clinton famously drank a pint of proper British beer at the Malt House. Labour Prime Minister at the time, Tony Blair hosted the event with leaders like President Boris Yeltsin and French president Jacques Chirac making a visit to the city.
Nelson Mandela has visited over the years stopping off to pop into the school named after him in Sparkbrook. Margaret Thatcher has visited many times in her career including trying her hand at chocolate making when she visited Cadbury’s in 1979.
Read more: HMRC issues warning
The Conservative Party Conference has been held many times at the ICC where we witnessed a ‘Dancing Queen’ Theresa May, strutting her stuff to ABBA, and Boris Johnson waving a brick at the crowd when he was Mayor of London.
So perhaps Birmingham is actually the centre of the political landscape after all.