{"id":574226,"date":"2026-05-09T05:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T05:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/574226\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T05:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T05:42:08","slug":"labour-loses-control-of-birmingham-city-council-after-14-years-of-leadership-may-2026-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/574226\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour loses control of Birmingham city council after 14 years of leadership | May 2026 elections"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Labour party\u2019s 14-year leadership in Birmingham<\/a> has come to an end after Reform, Greens and pro-Gaza independents made significant gains in the UK\u2019s second-largest city.<\/p>\n

No party has yet won an overall majority at Birmingham city council, one of Europe\u2019s largest local authorities, with the results reflecting wider political fragmentation across England<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Labour lost hundreds of council seats in England<\/a>, many to Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform UK, which made big gains across the Midlands and the north as well as taking seats from the Tories in the south.<\/p>\n

Labour was expected to take significant losses in the all-out elections in Birmingham, where 101 seats were up for grabs. The council has been plagued by a series of problems in recent years, from the declaration of bankruptcy in 2023, subsequent cuts to local services and the ongoing bin strike<\/a> \u2013 images of rubbish piled on the city\u2019s streets have made headlines across the world.<\/p>\n

The local authority, which is responsible for a \u00a34.4bn budget, has so far lost more than 30 Labour<\/a> councillors, and gained 21 Reform and 11 Green councillors.<\/p>\n

The outgoing Labour leader of the council, John Cotton, said the party needed to \u201clisten carefully to the message\u201d of the electorate, and called on the party to better communicate its vision to voters.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that midterm elections are always difficult for the party of government,\u201d he said. \u201cWe need to think about how we start to tell in a more coherent, systematic way, the story of the great things that this Labour government is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defending his record in Birmingham, Cotton said he had to take \u201cdifficult decisions to bring the finances back into balance\u201d and to tackle \u201clongstanding challenges that have dogged this council for many years like equal pay\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cotton, who has been a Labour councillor in Birmingham for 25 years, also called for greater unity in the city amid fears that the success of Reform, Greens and pro-Gaza independents would leave the city ungovernable. In April, a longstanding Liberal Democrat councillor in Birmingham, who lost his seat to Reform, warned the result could be \u201csomewhat of a bugger\u2019s muddle\u201d.<\/a><\/p>\n

Nosheen Khalid, an independent candidate who has been elected to represent the inner city ward of Alum Rock, said voters \u201chad enough\u201d of the Labour party and it was \u201cno longer the political home for a lot of people\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Labour party has caused a lot of damage in Birmingham,\u201d she said, noting the bankruptcy and cuts to youth services.<\/p>\n

Challenged on whether this election result would lead the local authority to be ungovernable, Khalid said: \u201cBirmingham has not been effectively governed for a very long time.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt won\u2019t be much worse than it is now, it can only get better when you have representatives who are grassroots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Independents have gained 10 seats at the council, some of whom focused parts of their campaign on a pro-Gaza message. Khalid, who was endorsed by Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s Your Party, ruled out working with Reform in Birmingham \u2013 which may become the largest party at the council \u2013 and called the party \u201cdivisive\u201d.<\/p>\n

When challenged about the specific focus some independents had on LGBTQ+ issues and Gaza, Khalid denied claims of antisemitism and homophobia. \u201cI can\u2019t speak for other candidates,\u201d she said. \u201cWe believe everybody deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and everybody has a place in society.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khalid said she wants to focus her tenure on issues such as child poverty, overcrowding and the lack of youth centres.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Labour party\u2019s 14-year leadership in Birmingham has come to an end after Reform, Greens and pro-Gaza independents…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574227,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-574226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574226\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574227"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}