Last month Glasgow City Council revealed how much it will have to save in the next three years. This year, it’s £61 million just to stand still. Over the next three years, it’s £180m.

That’s more than the entire budget for staff who work to maintain our roads, keep our streets clean and the entire budget for collecting bins and recycling put together. It’s almost as much as the cost of running all of the city’s primary schools.

This is not an abstract number. It signifies services and jobs. And the experience of the last few years is that there’s no-one waiting with a big cheque to stop the cuts.

There are people who could stop the cuts altogether. The Tories at Westminster have declared that austerity is over. If they’re serious they should free up the money and invest in people, communities and services. The SNP could make different, better, fairer choices at Holyrood and free up money for local government. But we could be waiting a while, using up time that we don’t have.

A future under Theresa May’s Brexit Britain looks bleak. A future of political grandstanding from the SNP at Holyrood is equally dismal.

Only Labour offers real hope.

Labour in local government has been leading the way in the fight for more resources so that we can get back to investing in communities. Just last month Glasgow City Council became the latest to call for a tourist tax. An idea with a simple premise: stay a little, pay a little.

Asking visitors to pay £2 a night could bring more than £4m into the city’s coffers. Money we could use to invest in transport, in streets and roads, in venues like the Royal Concert Hall, and in services that benefit everyone.

A tourist tax is just one way local government could raise money – if the appropriate powers were devolved. It’s time Scotland started to have that debate and began to invest in services again.