Muhammad Ismael migrated to the UK from Pakistan about a year ago, expecting a better quality of life – but what he found in Birmingham came as a shock.
“I wanted to experience what looked like a first-world country,” the 30-year-old NHS worker said. “But after coming to Birmingham and seeing the bin strike, I don’t think this is part of Britain.”
Having previously supported Labour, he doesn’t think he’ll vote for the party in the local elections. “I have seen so much rubbish everywhere,” he said.
Labour took control of Birmingham City Council in 2012, but its 14-year hold on the UK’s largest local authority could come to an end when voters head to the polls on 7 May.
Since Labour was last elected five years ago, the council has declared bankruptcy, raised council taxes by 24 per cent over three years, and overseen a 16-month long bin strike that led to giant rats roaming the streets.
Muhammad Ismael migrated from Pakistan (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)On Monday, the Labour administration said it had the framework of a deal that could end the strike and would move ahead with it if it is still in power after the election. Opposition parties called it an “election stunt” and accused Labour of playing “political games”.
Dire polls for Labour
Polls indicate Labour will lose control of Birmingham City Council, with support surging for rivals including Reform UK, the Green Party and independents. No party is likely to win the 51 seats needed for a majority, raising the prospect of potential coalitions and fragmented leadership.
Pollcheck, a polling analyst, expects Labour’s seats to plunge from 65 to 10, leaving the Conservatives as the biggest party with 23 seats. Reform would come in second with 20 seats, followed by independents (19), the Greens (16) and Lib Dems (13).
A poll by More in Common and ITV News expects Labour’s seats to halve to 32, with Reform in second place at 26, and the Conservatives on 25. The Lib Dems are forecast to win 10 seats, the Greens 7 and independents 1, the survey found.
Rats and potholes ‘everywhere’
Labour’s political rivals in the city believe a catalogue of failures is leaving the door open for them to take power.
Roger Harmer, leader of the Lib Dems in Birmingham, said there is disappointment with Labour both at a national and local level.
“In Birmingham, it’s focused on a council that has failed demonstrably, that has seen the city turned into one of the dirtiest in the country,” he said. “It won awards as the cleanest city in the UK in 2007 and now it’s at the other end of the extreme.
“[The council] has put people’s council tax up because they went bankrupt, it still doesn’t have a functioning IT system – all these things combined mean that people are just fed up with them.”
Roger Harmer is the leader of the Lib Dems in Birmingham and has confirmed there with Labour (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)Matt Bennett, a Conservative councillor, said the local authority “completely mishandled” equal pay claims that were brought by female staff who said they were not able to earn the same as male colleagues and have cost taxpayers up to £760m. A new council IT system has cost about £144m – more than seven times earlier estimates.
“They’ve wasted money, and as a result, they’ve had to go back to hard-working Brummies and ask for more money in council tax,” Bennett said. “People are angry about that.”
Bennett said it’s “beggars belief” that the bin strike has still not been resolved. “We still have piles of rubbish in the streets, we still have rats everywhere, and we don’t have a recycling service,” he said.
Uncollected rubbish pictured last year during the strike (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)Julien Pritchard, leader of the Green councillors, said waste collections have been “hit and miss”, with poorer areas worst affected by “patchy” services. A lack of bulky waste collections means people can’t get rid of bigger items, which has fuelled a rise in fly-tipping, he added.
‘Labour have let people down’
Poppy Bunn, 19, said she plans to vote Green, because the party is “for the people”. She said her area used to support Labour but the Green Party has gained traction because a lot of people have been “let down”.
“On a lot of the streets, there’s rats and foxes that have torn apart a lot of rubbish,” she said. “In the area that I live, there’s people who can’t access the tips themselves to take their own rubbish away, so they have to live with filth all around them.”
Bunn, an actor, said “it’s become a privilege to have a basic quality of life now, which is not what Labour said they had stood for”.
Poppy Bunn says she will vote Green in the upcoming election (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)Shafaq Hussain, chair of the End the Bin Strike campaign group and a Your Party candidate, said people with respiratory issues and asthma “couldn’t breathe” because of “mountains” of rubbish stacked outside their homes. Fly-tipping has blighted local parks, he added.
He recalls a 67-year-old disabled woman contacting him about mice “chewing away her wardrobes every night”, saying she couldn’t sleep.
The number of fly-tipping reports almost doubled in the months after strikes began last January, with the council saying it handed out more than 2,000 fixed penalty notices in the year to October 2025.
Fly-tipping is a big local issue with one woman complaining of rats nibbling at her wardrobe (Photo: Andrew Fox/The i Paper)Swathes of disillusioned voters appear to be turning away from Labour, with a number saying they are leaning towards Reform.
Emma, 45, said she would like to vote for Restore Britain – the party launched by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe in February – but, since they aren’t fielding any candidates yet, she thinks she will have to settle for Reform.
Emma, a hairdresser, said she has nothing against legal migration, but believes illegal migration is “pushing all the resources locally”, including hospitals, “to the brink”. “That’s pushing people’s taxes up, because we’re having to pay for everybody coming into the country,” she said.
She said there are “rats everywhere” but does not know if choosing any particular party would resolve the bin strike.
Raj Brahmbhatt, a 24-year-old student, said he plans to vote Reform and supports changes to the immigration system. “The good people – the people who are contributing – need to come here, but not the other way round,” he said.
Raj Brahmbhatt supports Reform’s immigration changes (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)Critics say Reform is campaigning on national issues like immigration that have little to do with what councillors can achieve at a local level. Many Reform candidates in Birmingham appear to be “paper” candidates – meaning they are not doing any campaigning.
The i Paper researched all of Reform’s candidates in Birmingham and found no record of campaigning activity by at least two-thirds of them.
Reform was the only party to refuse requests by The i Paper for an interview with any of their candidates in Birmingham. However, a party source claimed candidates have knocked on more than 39,000 doors since the campaign began and hand-delivered more than 350,000 leaflets and letters.
Rat infestations have grown in the city (Photo: Will Timms)Paul Smith, an independent candidate who previously spent months campaigning for Reform, said the party doesn’t want any councillors going “rogue” and causing problems.
“They feel that if they put a Reform rosette on a donkey, they’ll get them through,” he said. “And that’s evident in a lot of wards… because the data says they’ve got a very good chance.”
“Look at their literature: it’s all about Nigel Farage, it’s all about the wider party,” he added.
Paul Smith (left) being interviewed by The i Paper (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)Swathes of independent candidates
Smith said independents like him are a mix of community activists, people sidelined by the major parties, and Palestinian supporters who disagree with Labour’s policy on Gaza.
Lawyer Akhmed Yakoob has formed an electoral pact with George Galloway’s Workers Party to field about 70 prospective councillors across the city under the Independent Candidates Alliance. At the 2024 general election, Yakoob came close to beating Labour’s Shabana Mahmood in the Birmingham Ladywood seat, campaigning primarily against Labour’s stance on Gaza.
Your Party, founded by former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, has five candidates and is backing a long list of independents.
Council leader accepts strikes ‘frustrating’
Along with many voters who spoke to The i Paper, Ian Rogers, 64, said there have been too many “broken promises” from Labour.
“Pretty much everything that they said they were going to do they haven’t done,” he said. “The whole green agenda seems to have been forgotten all about – that’s the main thing for me, really.”
Rogers, a lecturer, said he is likely to vote Green, believing the party has “good ideas”, and are “forward looking”.
Ian Rogers believes in Green’s ideas and will be voting for them this election (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)Labour’s council leader, John Cotton, blamed its troubles on a lack of funding from the previous Conservative central government and the previous Conservative-Lib Dem coalition’s failure to resolve equal pay issues at a local level.
“There was a wider context of austerity that ripped the guts out of local governments up and down the country,” he said. “Councils like Birmingham – big metropolitan areas – were unfairly funded at the expense of other places. In Birmingham’s case, that cost us £1bn.”
He said the waste dispute has been “very frustrating” but the council needed to “modernise” the service and make sure an agreement did not create further equal pay issues. Cotton said council tax rises above the usual 4.99 per cent cap will not be needed again.
John Cotton says ‘councils are unfairly funded’ (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)Gurdial Singh Atwal, a Labour councillor, admitted the party has made mistakes and said it will probably lose control of the council.
Atwal is keen to steer the conversation away from the party, saying he is “proud” of the work he has done locally. Councillors like him may well scrape by in areas where support for Labour remains high.
Madeline Hempstead speaks of the inconvenience of the bin strikes (Photo: Scarlett Milburn-Smith/The i Paper)Madeline Hempstead, a 28-year-old who is unemployed, said the bin strike has been “inconvenient” but she is still likely to vote Labour, believing the party’s views are closest to her own.
“I am not happy with anyone,” she said. “I am voting for the lesser of all the evils.”
Video production by Scarlett Milburn-Smith, Ed Campbell and Cormac O’Brien
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