The ward lies to the south of Sutton Coldfield and is a mix of private and moderately wealthy housing to the east and social housing, including large blocks of flats to the north and west of a much run down High Street. It has a strong Conservative tradition. The Tory group leader came second in the poll here, in a two seat ward. The Tories were re- elected in both seats but with a much reduced % of the poll. This did not matter because Labour lost exactly half of its votes. Reform and the Greens were the recipients of the decline of the Labour and Tory votes. However, there should be some caution here and elsewhere regarding the rise in the Green vote. It should be noted that in two seats wards in 2022 the Greens only fielded one candidate, except in places they were certain of winning. Thus it is not a case of comparing like for like. Reform did well in the ward but would probably taken second place if it had fielded two candidates with English surnames. Instead it fielded one Muslim candidate, who got more than 300 votes (31%) less than their other candidate. The differential between these two candidates was thus much higher than for all same party candidates at this election. The Liberals here, as in most of the city, failed to get more than a few hundred votes. They, as in much of Great Britain, concentrate their vote in a limited area meaning that here in Birmingham they either come first or on or near last in the polls.
One aspect in my overall review of voting will be the vexed issue of the size of wards and whether or not the Boundary Commission for England has a bias in the drawing of boundaries. It has long been known that it requires less votes to elect a Labour MP than a Tory one; a lot less. While efforts have been made to change this situation in recent years this remains the case. Ward boundaries affect constituency boundaries. But ward boundaries have an added problem when you are dealing with two councillor wards and one councillor wards. In Birmingham it is not the case that one councillor wards have half the electorate as two councillor wards. Thus a councillor might be elected with 600 votes in one ward and 3000 votes next door. The statistics for this will be examined in my review.
EDGBASTON
Turnout 38% (31.5%) +6.5%
Conservative 42% (46%) -4%
Green 26.5% (5.5%) +21%
Labour 14.8% (41.5%) -26.7%
Reform 10% (0%) +10%
Liberal Democrats 6.5% (13.9%) -7.4%
In most of Southern England the Liberal Democrats are the alternative to the Tories. Hard as it may seem to Brummies the place where I was a child and lived most of my life has never ever had a Labour MP but that does mean that it did not try. In the landslide of 1945 it came within 500 votes of achieving the impossible. There was, as in every constituency, a residual Labour working class socialism. But that has long gone. The working classes in the South, outside London and a few ethnically diverse or student towns, turned Tory in the Thatcherite wave. They, with middle class Toryism, kept the Conservatives party in power for decades. But in 2026 that alliance was fractured. But it was not there the Labour Party that reaped the benefit. It was the Liberals. And, despite the Labour landslide, the Liberals came back from the dead in the shires of southern England. It is its rise which gave Labour its “loveless landslide”. Here, in the Midlands, people often forget the tradition of working class Toryism. Newspapers, like the Daily Express, propagated the message with its banner “For King and Empire”. That nationalist working class Toryism fell apart before 2026 with not just the so-called “Boris wave”. The Conservatives became the party of a largely Middle class home owning moderately wealthy class, which is reflected in the vote in Edgbaston and in Sutton Coldfield. The patriotic working class Tories have moved on and found their home in Reform. They have been joined by the “red wall” let down by Labour. In Birmingham it is not the Liberals but the Greens that have benefitted from disenchantment middle class with the ruling parties, while the working class white vote has gone Reform. Thus in Edgbaston the Conservatives retain power because of a property owning middle class. Reform did well in the council and social housing to the east of the road into Harborne. Students voted Green and the Liberals were no where to be seen. As for Labour its vote fractured to both the Greens and Reform, by a guesstimate in Edgbaston of 2 to Green and 1 to Reform; though in other wards the reverse is true. Where this leaves Labour is the reason for the present struggles in Labour. Turn Left and it loses more votes to Reform; turn right and it is a godsend to the Greens. Stay where you are and, as in Plato’s analogy, the horseman who rides two horses is bound to crash!
Turnout 33.1% (39.4%) -6.3% (NB: these figures on turnout are taken from the BC official website. They are clearly wrong.)
Green 64.3% (74.7%) -13.4%
Reform 24.7% (0%) +24.7%
Conservative 4.7% (5%) -0.3%
Labour 4% (17.9%) -13.9%
Liberal Democrats 1.8% (0.9%) +0.9%
Workers Party 0.5% (0%) +0.5
Again here in the south of the city the Greens and the Labour votes declined with the rise of Reform. Working class voters of both parties turned to Reform in this and neighbouring wards. The Tory vote, never great, remained static while the decline of Labour and Green put together was almost the exact % as the rise of Reform. This indicates that the rise of Green among the ethnic minorities had the exact opposite effect on white working class voters. It did not have the effect of turning this and a number of other wards Reform. However if this direction of travel continues, in 2030, then these wards will turn Reform. Thus Birmingham belatedly will follow the same trajectory as that of neighbouring Walsall and Solihull in 2026.
Herewith another analysed ward result from the 2026 election… this one is curious… the fall list of ward results will be available next weekend with an overarching analysis.
CASTLE VALE
Turnout 29.8% (19.4%) +10.4%
Labour 44.3% (40.5%) +3.8%
Reform 42.2% (0%) +42.2%
Green 6.1% (37%) -31.6%
Conservative 5.% (21.6%) -16.3%
Liberal Democrats 1.5% (0%) +1.5%
Workers 0.5% (0%) +0.5%
This is the first and only ward in the city to record an increase in the Labour vote and %. It was done at the expense of the Greens. It is though evident that in this largely white working class ward there was both tactical voting to keep Reform out but also positive voting from surprisingly the Greens to Reform. The Green vote there fell heavily. It. Is plausible to suggest that the Green vote in 2022 was inflated by protest votes to get the Labour councillor out. But that protest vote went in 2026 to Reform. At the same time some Green voters, worried that Reform would win the seat, voted Labour. The Tory vote collapsed to Reform. The Liberal Democrats vote was negligible in a ward in which they did not stand in 2022. The Workers Party received 11 votes the same as the Socialist candidate in 2022 - the same people?
Pity your Friday’s article never arrived… who governs? No one … I doubt whether we have yet to reach the state of Starmer’s government which has to date 1,200 plus reviews ongoing. Reviews kick cans down the road for ever. They save governing and are part of the victory of process over leadership. As I wrote during the week Birmingham has to sort out who governs before process takes control or is it the case that process takes control when government, be that local or national, is incapable of governing. As I said then no coalition will have political or moral legitimacy. A left coalition cannot work without Labour and the one thing that can be said about May 7 with certainty is that the electorate did not want Labour in power. A right wing coalition cannot work because no party will work with Reform and I suspect it is secretly glad about that, as the government of the city goes pear shaped. You speak about the moral fervour of the Greens? Really, forgive me for saying there is no morality which extols homosexuality, abortion, and contraception but has councillors and voters that would ban (and worse if you read the Hadith) these things. Can hypocrisy ever be moral? And the Greens matter because they will be central to any left coalition. But the very incoherence of the Greens will also affect a left coalition. So the commissioners will have to interfere more not less. But you have not noticed a weakness concerning the commissioners. Everything is regulated concerning what the Council does but nothing is regulated concerning what the Council is. There is no Commissioner for governance. This has caused failure. Structures which led to bankruptcy and failure have continued. This is very different from other bankrupt councils, Northamptonshire and Cheshire eg where these councils were broken up. So the Commissioners will fail, the Councillors will fail, and with the economy the rest of this year and next heading downwards, the situation will get worse not better. Governance has been allowed to get worse over the years. Take eg the Registers of Interests and of Gifts etc. Some of these produced by councillors in the last council have been works of fiction. People have hidden, either accidentally or deliberately, benefits because they have been self-regulated. The regime has been lax and this laxity has led to the problems the Council has faced in so many areas.
One final thought as to why the Tories did poorly but, unlike Labour, not disastrously. You mention civic pride and you are right. It is self-evident that the Tory vote held up in Sutton Coldfield, indeed gaining seats there, but did badly elsewhere. There is a civic pride in Sutton as Sutton not found elsewhere. Its town council is central to that. It alone of all the boroughs and UDCs that today make up Birmingham survived. Sutton will no doubt want to consider decoupling itself from Birmingham unless a root and branch change occurs to the city’s structure, just as Rutland decoupled itself from Leicestershire. Today Rutland is a county again, even though its population is smaller than Sutton Coldfield. Its parliamentary link with Leicestershire has gone and it has returned to its historic link with Stamford in Lincolnshire. Civic pride has returned… small can be well run and beautiful…Ockham’s razor applies to local government… the bigger the more complex a thing the more likely it is to be wrong!
Last tonight
ERDINGTON
Turnout 36.9% (31.7%) +5.2%
Conservative 43.2% (53.4%) -10.2%
Labour 19.3% (38.6%) -19.3% (sic)
Reform 18.1% (0%) +18.1%
Green 17.5% (4.5%) +13%
Liberal Democrats 3.5% (2.4%) +1.1%
Workers Party 0.7% (0%) +0.7%
Trade Unionists 0.6% (1.1%) -0.5%
The ward lies to the south of Sutton Coldfield and is a mix of private and moderately wealthy housing to the east and social housing, including large blocks of flats to the north and west of a much run down High Street. It has a strong Conservative tradition. The Tory group leader came second in the poll here, in a two seat ward. The Tories were re- elected in both seats but with a much reduced % of the poll. This did not matter because Labour lost exactly half of its votes. Reform and the Greens were the recipients of the decline of the Labour and Tory votes. However, there should be some caution here and elsewhere regarding the rise in the Green vote. It should be noted that in two seats wards in 2022 the Greens only fielded one candidate, except in places they were certain of winning. Thus it is not a case of comparing like for like. Reform did well in the ward but would probably taken second place if it had fielded two candidates with English surnames. Instead it fielded one Muslim candidate, who got more than 300 votes (31%) less than their other candidate. The differential between these two candidates was thus much higher than for all same party candidates at this election. The Liberals here, as in most of the city, failed to get more than a few hundred votes. They, as in much of Great Britain, concentrate their vote in a limited area meaning that here in Birmingham they either come first or on or near last in the polls.
One aspect in my overall review of voting will be the vexed issue of the size of wards and whether or not the Boundary Commission for England has a bias in the drawing of boundaries. It has long been known that it requires less votes to elect a Labour MP than a Tory one; a lot less. While efforts have been made to change this situation in recent years this remains the case. Ward boundaries affect constituency boundaries. But ward boundaries have an added problem when you are dealing with two councillor wards and one councillor wards. In Birmingham it is not the case that one councillor wards have half the electorate as two councillor wards. Thus a councillor might be elected with 600 votes in one ward and 3000 votes next door. The statistics for this will be examined in my review.
EDGBASTON
Turnout 38% (31.5%) +6.5%
Conservative 42% (46%) -4%
Green 26.5% (5.5%) +21%
Labour 14.8% (41.5%) -26.7%
Reform 10% (0%) +10%
Liberal Democrats 6.5% (13.9%) -7.4%
In most of Southern England the Liberal Democrats are the alternative to the Tories. Hard as it may seem to Brummies the place where I was a child and lived most of my life has never ever had a Labour MP but that does mean that it did not try. In the landslide of 1945 it came within 500 votes of achieving the impossible. There was, as in every constituency, a residual Labour working class socialism. But that has long gone. The working classes in the South, outside London and a few ethnically diverse or student towns, turned Tory in the Thatcherite wave. They, with middle class Toryism, kept the Conservatives party in power for decades. But in 2026 that alliance was fractured. But it was not there the Labour Party that reaped the benefit. It was the Liberals. And, despite the Labour landslide, the Liberals came back from the dead in the shires of southern England. It is its rise which gave Labour its “loveless landslide”. Here, in the Midlands, people often forget the tradition of working class Toryism. Newspapers, like the Daily Express, propagated the message with its banner “For King and Empire”. That nationalist working class Toryism fell apart before 2026 with not just the so-called “Boris wave”. The Conservatives became the party of a largely Middle class home owning moderately wealthy class, which is reflected in the vote in Edgbaston and in Sutton Coldfield. The patriotic working class Tories have moved on and found their home in Reform. They have been joined by the “red wall” let down by Labour. In Birmingham it is not the Liberals but the Greens that have benefitted from disenchantment middle class with the ruling parties, while the working class white vote has gone Reform. Thus in Edgbaston the Conservatives retain power because of a property owning middle class. Reform did well in the council and social housing to the east of the road into Harborne. Students voted Green and the Liberals were no where to be seen. As for Labour its vote fractured to both the Greens and Reform, by a guesstimate in Edgbaston of 2 to Green and 1 to Reform; though in other wards the reverse is true. Where this leaves Labour is the reason for the present struggles in Labour. Turn Left and it loses more votes to Reform; turn right and it is a godsend to the Greens. Stay where you are and, as in Plato’s analogy, the horseman who rides two horses is bound to crash!
DRUIDS HEATH AND MONYHULL
Turnout 33.1% (39.4%) -6.3% (NB: these figures on turnout are taken from the BC official website. They are clearly wrong.)
Green 64.3% (74.7%) -13.4%
Reform 24.7% (0%) +24.7%
Conservative 4.7% (5%) -0.3%
Labour 4% (17.9%) -13.9%
Liberal Democrats 1.8% (0.9%) +0.9%
Workers Party 0.5% (0%) +0.5
Again here in the south of the city the Greens and the Labour votes declined with the rise of Reform. Working class voters of both parties turned to Reform in this and neighbouring wards. The Tory vote, never great, remained static while the decline of Labour and Green put together was almost the exact % as the rise of Reform. This indicates that the rise of Green among the ethnic minorities had the exact opposite effect on white working class voters. It did not have the effect of turning this and a number of other wards Reform. However if this direction of travel continues, in 2030, then these wards will turn Reform. Thus Birmingham belatedly will follow the same trajectory as that of neighbouring Walsall and Solihull in 2026.
Herewith another analysed ward result from the 2026 election… this one is curious… the fall list of ward results will be available next weekend with an overarching analysis.
CASTLE VALE
Turnout 29.8% (19.4%) +10.4%
Labour 44.3% (40.5%) +3.8%
Reform 42.2% (0%) +42.2%
Green 6.1% (37%) -31.6%
Conservative 5.% (21.6%) -16.3%
Liberal Democrats 1.5% (0%) +1.5%
Workers 0.5% (0%) +0.5%
This is the first and only ward in the city to record an increase in the Labour vote and %. It was done at the expense of the Greens. It is though evident that in this largely white working class ward there was both tactical voting to keep Reform out but also positive voting from surprisingly the Greens to Reform. The Green vote there fell heavily. It. Is plausible to suggest that the Green vote in 2022 was inflated by protest votes to get the Labour councillor out. But that protest vote went in 2026 to Reform. At the same time some Green voters, worried that Reform would win the seat, voted Labour. The Tory vote collapsed to Reform. The Liberal Democrats vote was negligible in a ward in which they did not stand in 2022. The Workers Party received 11 votes the same as the Socialist candidate in 2022 - the same people?
Pity your Friday’s article never arrived… who governs? No one … I doubt whether we have yet to reach the state of Starmer’s government which has to date 1,200 plus reviews ongoing. Reviews kick cans down the road for ever. They save governing and are part of the victory of process over leadership. As I wrote during the week Birmingham has to sort out who governs before process takes control or is it the case that process takes control when government, be that local or national, is incapable of governing. As I said then no coalition will have political or moral legitimacy. A left coalition cannot work without Labour and the one thing that can be said about May 7 with certainty is that the electorate did not want Labour in power. A right wing coalition cannot work because no party will work with Reform and I suspect it is secretly glad about that, as the government of the city goes pear shaped. You speak about the moral fervour of the Greens? Really, forgive me for saying there is no morality which extols homosexuality, abortion, and contraception but has councillors and voters that would ban (and worse if you read the Hadith) these things. Can hypocrisy ever be moral? And the Greens matter because they will be central to any left coalition. But the very incoherence of the Greens will also affect a left coalition. So the commissioners will have to interfere more not less. But you have not noticed a weakness concerning the commissioners. Everything is regulated concerning what the Council does but nothing is regulated concerning what the Council is. There is no Commissioner for governance. This has caused failure. Structures which led to bankruptcy and failure have continued. This is very different from other bankrupt councils, Northamptonshire and Cheshire eg where these councils were broken up. So the Commissioners will fail, the Councillors will fail, and with the economy the rest of this year and next heading downwards, the situation will get worse not better. Governance has been allowed to get worse over the years. Take eg the Registers of Interests and of Gifts etc. Some of these produced by councillors in the last council have been works of fiction. People have hidden, either accidentally or deliberately, benefits because they have been self-regulated. The regime has been lax and this laxity has led to the problems the Council has faced in so many areas.
One final thought as to why the Tories did poorly but, unlike Labour, not disastrously. You mention civic pride and you are right. It is self-evident that the Tory vote held up in Sutton Coldfield, indeed gaining seats there, but did badly elsewhere. There is a civic pride in Sutton as Sutton not found elsewhere. Its town council is central to that. It alone of all the boroughs and UDCs that today make up Birmingham survived. Sutton will no doubt want to consider decoupling itself from Birmingham unless a root and branch change occurs to the city’s structure, just as Rutland decoupled itself from Leicestershire. Today Rutland is a county again, even though its population is smaller than Sutton Coldfield. Its parliamentary link with Leicestershire has gone and it has returned to its historic link with Stamford in Lincolnshire. Civic pride has returned… small can be well run and beautiful…Ockham’s razor applies to local government… the bigger the more complex a thing the more likely it is to be wrong!