By Cain O’Mahoney
On the same day as the Caerphilly by-election, Labour also lost a by-election for a City Council seat in Birmingham to the Lib Dems.
That was expected, given Labour’s lamentable record in Birmingham – the big surprise of this election was a prototype ‘Your Party’ candidate gaining nearly a thousand votes.
That is just under 20 per cent of the vote, easily surpassing the Greens who many thought would make major gains, even possibly winning the seat.
Although standing as an ‘Independent’ on the ballot (‘Your Party’ does not officially exist at the moment of course), the election literature of the candidate Carol Williams had a left programme and carried pictures of her with Jeremy Corbyn, while she openly stated she was a member of the Socialist Workers Party.
The by-election was caused by the sad death of the sitting Labour councillor. In the 2024 local elections, she won the seat with nearly 2,500 votes. But this time the Labour candidate received just over 1,100 votes.
Moseley is not a typical Birmingham seat, being part of the ‘Moseley Triangle’ around the University of Birmingham and made up of the young middle class. But the results are still significant:
Lib Dems 1634 (34.6%)
Labour 1149 (24.4%)
Carol Williams 923 (19.6%)
Green Party 474 (10%)
Reform 345 (7.3%)
Conservatives 111 (2.4%)
B’ham Community Ind 80 (1.7%)
Reform was never a threat in Moseley, but it is interesting to see that the voting base for the Tories – who received 700 votes in 2024 – has evaporated, either switching to Reform or the Lib Dems.
Labour disintegrating
There is a feeling in the Birmingham labour movement that the Labour Party in this city is slowly disintegrating. Members are voting with their feet, while since the 2024 General Election nine Labour City Councillors have resigned or been pushed out by the Labour leadership.
When the government Commissioners were sent in after the mess the right wing Labour City Council got into regarding their mishandling of the Equal Pay issue, we on the left said all Labour councillors should resign otherwise Labour will be seen as responsible for the massive cuts the Commissioners would impose. No, no they said – they should stay at the helm to help minimise the impact of the crisis, reminiscent of Neil Kinnock’s ‘dented shield’ policy of the 1980s, when local authorities faced the onslaught from Thatcher.
It didn’t work then and isn’t working now, and Labour is paying the price.
[Featured photo – Moseley in Birmingham. Photo – Wiki commons – credit here]
