The Week Birmingham Asked Who Is Actually In Charge
Birmingham’s voters have broken the old political settlement. The question now is whether the new politics can do something even harder: govern.
Week Ending 29 May 2026
Well dear reader, another week draws to a close and, if I am honest, this one did not entirely go according to plan. One or two articles arrived fashionably late, one briefly wandered off into the digital wilderness altogether, and there were moments when technology and I appeared to be engaged in a bitter struggle for supremacy. I would naturally like to reassure everyone that these difficulties had absolutely nothing to do with my age, declining IT skills or an inability to remember which button does what. The unusually warm May weather is the more likely culprit. At least that is the explanation I intend to stick with until compelling evidence emerges to the contrary. Despite the occasional wobble, readership remained above 20,000 across the various platforms, which is enormously encouraging. Thank you for that. Midlands GRIT only works because people continue to read it, share it, challenge it and occasionally tell me I have completely missed the point.
Looking back over the week, it became clear that although each article approached the subject from a slightly different angle, they were really all asking the same question. Birmingham’s voters have changed the political landscape dramatically, but who actually governs the city now? On Monday I argued that the election result was more than a routine political shift. Birmingham’s voters have not merely rearranged the furniture inside the council chamber. They have disrupted an entire political settlement that had become stale, managerial and increasingly detached from ordinary residents. The challenge I set the new councillors was deliberately simple. Build something. House someone. Fix something. Decide something. The city has had no shortage of reports, consultations, reviews, frameworks and strategies. What it has often lacked is visible decision-making.
Tuesday took that argument a stage further by examining the difference between process and leadership. Nobody sensible wants public services run on instinct alone. Officers matter. Experts matter. Evidence matters. But politics exists for a reason. It exists because eventually someone must exercise judgement. Drawing on memories of the South Birmingham Study during the 1990s, when transport planning was being debated seriously by politicians who were prepared to make difficult choices, I reflected on how modern government too often confuses administration with leadership. More and more decisions appear to disappear into systems, procedures and consultations until nobody can quite remember who was responsible in the first place. The result is not better government. It is simply slower government.
By Wednesday we arrived at perhaps the most uncomfortable question facing Birmingham. The city remains under commissioners. There were certainly serious failures which justified intervention. The financial collapse, governance failures, equal pay liabilities and Oracle debacle are not inventions. They happened. But intervention was supposed to be a repair mechanism, not a permanent replacement for democratic accountability. If commissioners can influence, delay, shape or effectively veto decisions, then residents are entitled to ask who ultimately governs Birmingham. Elected politicians can be removed by voters. Commissioners cannot. That may be lawful, but it creates an increasingly important democratic question which deserves a public answer.
Thursday widened the lens and looked beyond Birmingham to the condition of Britain’s traditional political parties. Labour and the Conservatives still attack each other with great enthusiasm, but increasingly it feels as though they are arguing within the same narrow managerial framework. The article reflected on how political parties begin to lose their vitality when they stop behaving like movements and start behaving like brands. Birmingham Labour’s evolution over recent years provided an obvious example. Once a party that produced independent-minded figures willing to challenge assumptions, it increasingly appeared to become a managed organisation where decisions flowed downwards rather than upwards. The Conservatives have their own problems nationally, but Birmingham’s Conservatives have often survived because they retained something of a local civic identity rooted in practical municipal politics. The wider point was that voters may not be looking for better management. They may simply be looking for politics again.
That brought us to Friday and the central question facing Birmingham’s new political forces. Winning an election is exciting. Governing is much harder. Reform must prove it can be more than a vehicle for public frustration. The Greens must demonstrate that enthusiasm, principle and moral urgency can be translated into practical administration. The Liberal Democrats may find themselves in the unfamiliar position of genuinely influencing events. Labour must decide whether it wishes to renew itself or merely explain its defeat. The voters have not chosen chaos. They have rejected the old order. Those are very different things. Birmingham’s electorate has effectively told the city’s politicians that the old arrangements no longer command confidence. The task now is to prove that something better can replace them.
If you missed any of the articles during the week, perhaps because one arrived late, another briefly vanished or life simply got in the way, I would encourage you to look back at the full versions. Taken together they form a single conversation about Birmingham, democracy, accountability and the future direction of Britain’s second city. They are, in many ways, five chapters of the same story.
As always, thank you for reading. Without you there would be no Midlands GRIT. There would simply be an elderly columnist sitting in front of a keyboard, muttering about governance, democracy and municipal politics while occasionally blaming software failures on unusually warm weather. Frankly, that would be a much less attractive proposition.
See you next week.