Labour was on course on Friday to lose overall control of Birmingham City Council, the largest local authority in Europe, with Reform UK on track to take a substantial number of seats and the Liberal Democrats picking up several wards in the south of the city. Counting at the ICC continued through the afternoon for all 101 seats across the council's 69 wards.
Laurence Turner, the Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield, conceded the broad outlines of the result before final tallies were called. "It looks like we are heading for a period in opposition on the city council," he told reporters. "There is a lot of soul-searching to do, and not just in Birmingham."
Reform's deputy leader Richard Tice arrived at the count from the party's campaign launch in Sandwell to celebrate gains in northern wards including Erdington, Stechford and Yardley North. Reform candidates polled strongly in wards that Labour had carried by twenty points or more in 2024, although the precise composition of the new council was not expected to be clear until late evening.
The Conservatives, who had gone into the contest defending only seven seats after the disastrous 2022 result, ended the day with only modest losses and could become the second-largest opposition group depending on how late-counting wards in Sutton Coldfield broke. The Liberal Democrats took two wards in Edgbaston outright.
Labour councillors privately said the Birmingham result reflected lingering anger over the section 114 financial-distress notice the council issued in 2023, the equal-pay liabilities that drove it, and a 21 per cent council-tax increase imposed under government commissioners. National factors, including the cost of living and the perception that the Starmer government had under-delivered on growth, compounded the local picture.
A new council leader is unlikely to be chosen until later this month. The most plausible outcome, depending on the final arithmetic, is a minority Reform-Conservative arrangement supported on confidence votes, or a no-overall-control council in which Liberal Democrats and Greens act as kingmakers.