Birmingham City Council was facing chaos on Friday night – and this time it had nothing to do with the long-running bin strikes.
The only thing clear was that Labour had been ejected from power after 14 years.
The council is hopelessly split with Reform, the Conservatives, Greens and Muslim sectarian independents all picking up seats.
With 99 seats declared out of 101 on Friday night, the balance of power was divided six ways and no single party had a clear mandate to claim themselves victors.
Reform were the biggest party on 22 seats, followed by the Greens on 19, the Conservatives on 16, Labour on 17, the Liberal Democrats on 12 and the independents on 13.
If no party has the numbers required to form a majority, it is likely to descend into infighting at a time when the local authority is still reeling from declaring itself effectively bankrupt in 2023.
The inconclusive result could also undermine efforts to resolve the year-long bin strike, which has left mountains of waste piled on the streets of Britain’s second city.
One senior councillor remarked: ‘How you come up with a sensible way of leading the council from that, I don’t know.’ Last month the council said it and the Unite union had agreed a deal which could be put to members of the union for a vote. But the elections mean that will now be delayed.
Labour, led by Councillor John Cotton in Birmingham, expected a ‘bin fire’ in the city council elections
Voters have turned against Labour over issues including the bin strike which left mountains of rubbish in the streets
Outgoing Labour council leader John Cotton – who lost his seat – suggested the reason for the party’s failure locally was due to their messaging, not 14 years of blundering Labour rule in the city.
Conceding defeat, he said: ‘I think we need to listen carefully to the message that the electorates have given us today and we need to think about how we start to tell in a more coherent and systematic way the story of the great things that this Labour government is doing.
‘The positive plan that we put forward for the future of the city clearly didn’t connect with the electorate.’
Labour’s humiliation was partly brought about by the city’s Muslim voters flocking to independent candidates who ran on nakedly sectarian lines and exploited anger over the war in Gaza.
A so-called alliance of independent Muslim candidates had been organised by ‘TikTok lawyer’-turned-political activist Akhmed Yakoob and property developer Shakeel Afsar, who led protests against LGBT education in Birmingham schools in 2019.
Their candidates won a host of seats with Muslim-majority populations, including Nechells, where Mansuur Ahmed was elected at the age of just 19.
The independents triumphed in former Labour strongholds such as Alum Rock and Sparkbrook.
Mr Yakoob hailed the results as ‘amazing’, adding: ‘Our aim was to get rid of Labour and put Labour into extinction and we’ve just gone one step closer to doing that.
‘They weren’t taking us seriously. The political parties, the media, the public authorities were looking at us as some cowboys and some newbies.’
There were raucous scenes as Mr Yakoob and his independents left the count, with one of their young successful candidates, 22-year-old Raihaan Abbas, hauled into the air and carried away on their shoulders as the group cheered. But the election’s most controversial independent candidate, convicted terrorist Shahid Butt, was not so lucky in the Sparkhill ward, losing out to Labour.
Butt was jailed in Yemen for plotting to blow up the British consulate in 1999, and provoked outrage when he announced he would be standing.
‘It’s blind loyalty,’ he said of the voters’ decision to stick with Labour in his ward.
Butt ended the day with a dismal 453 votes, nearly 1,000 votes short of his nearest Labour rival.
