This week started with me reporting a couple of things that many in Liverpool already know – that their city has been ravaged by the austerity agenda of the past nine years, and that the Conservatives don’t care too much about them and their lives.

Most people in this city know it – and most people are angry about it – but this week’s report into local council funding cuts by the Centre for Cities thinktank brought into sharp focus just how unfair this all is.

The stark statistics are there for all to see. Since the coalition government formed in 2010, the people of Liverpool have shouldered the burden of the equivalent of an £816 per head fall in day-to-day public spending.

Compare that with Oxford, where the figure has actually gone up by £115 during the same period, and you start to understand why people around here feel they are on their own.

And that feeling is plain to see in the cash-strapped corridors of hamstrung power at Liverpool city council. The city’s mayor, Joe Anderson, is a colourful and outspoken character who often divides opinion, but he has been consistent in calling out the unfairness of a funding formula that means his authority will lose a staggering £444m between 2010 and 2020 – that’s 64% of the council’s overall budget.

There is an unfair criticism often levelled at Scousers that they are always complaining about how they are treated. But following the “managed decline” of the city during the Thatcher years, Liverpool is now facing a situation where government funding could essentially fall off a cliff altogether after 2020.

Add to that the problems faced by thousands of people and families who have been switched over to the flawed universal credit system, and you have a perfect storm of residents in need and a local authority without the means to protect them.

Walking around Liverpool, you will come across plenty of plaques and engravings that testify to the huge part that European Union funding has played in reconstructing this proud city after the destructive period of industrial decline during the 1980s. So you can see why a brutal Brexit is the last thing anyone around here wants.

‘The Cunard building is now worth double what the council paid for it, and bringing in several million pounds each year.’ The ‘three graces ‘ on Liverpool waterfront. Photograph: John Davidson Photos/Alamy

As Anderson will tell you, the perilous state of the city’s finances means new and sometimes risky ideas have to be floated each day. His big policy is “invest to earn” – with the council purchasing assets, making investments and attempting to instigate regeneration around the city in order to create cash to pump back into its diminishing coffers.

Sometimes it works – council staff are now based in the beautiful Cunard building, one of Liverpool’s “three graces”, after the authority purchased and refurbished the building for £15m. It is now worth double that, and bringing in several million pounds each year.

But Anderson has also put forward other plans that have not been well received in the city and have damaged his own standing. These include a proposed deal with Redrow Homes to build executive homes in part of a much-loved park, which he hoped would have helped boost the council tax base on which he now so heavily relies.

But after an ill-thought-out battle with local campaigners, the council was defeated by a hugely embarrassing high court ruling that hurt it and its under-pressure leader.

Plenty will argue that the council should never have proposed such a scheme – and that’s probably true – but the fact that it did is perhaps symptomatic of a public authority that doesn’t know where its next pay cheque is coming from.

So what can be done? Well, people around here are used to having to look after themselves: there are already a huge number of volunteer operations doing amazing work to try and fill in the gaps where the council can no longer afford to support vulnerable residents.

There are too many to list, but one that neatly sums up the spirit of the city is the Fans Supporting Foodbanks organisation, which collects food for struggling families before Liverpool and Everton home matches, with consistently heartwarming results.

But the generosity of the people of Liverpool – remarkable though it is – can only go so far. Which is why the council is urgently calling for a review – a royal commission to be precise – into exactly how the government decides where it issues its support.

One would hope that a government whose own core spending power figures show that Liverpool council would have been £72m better off by 2019/20, if it had incurred cuts in line with the national average for all councils, might acquiesce to this request, but no one around here will be holding their breath.

Liverpool FC’s famous anthem tells people here that they will never walk alone – but with a government seemingly indifferent to the suffering people in this city are facing on a daily basis, and the end of the lifeline of EU funding, it’s not hard to see why Scousers believe they now have nowhere to turn.

• Liam Thorp is political editor at the Liverpool Echo