When a political storm is brewing, like the one predicted by electoral polls in the United Kingdom, the just always end up paying for the sinners. “I don’t want to know anything about them,” says one of the operators who works piecework to expand the tram infrastructure of Birmingham, the second largest city on the island after London, by four more stations, when asked about the Conservative Party. “It has become impossible to live at the price that everything is, and [Rishi] Sunak has been unable to change anything. “I prefer the ones that were there before,” says the worker, continuing to stack fences on the ground.
Birmingham is the largest city in the West Midlands, the West Midlands, a county in England with a population of approximately three million people. In the devilish design of British municipal and local administration, the seven towns in the county share the same mayor. Conservative Andy Street, who before entering politics was a successful director of two companies as powerful as the John Lewis department store and the Waitrose supermarket chain, faces the polls on May 2. At least a third of all local offices in England and Wales will be up for election that day (they will not vote in Scotland or Northern Ireland). Prime Minister Rishi Sunak awaits that vote with his heart in his mouth. If the defeat is as resounding as the polls predict, and the tories lose more than 500 of the almost 1,000 representative positions that must be re-elected, the drums of war will sound within the party.
Polls have been giving the Labor opposition an average lead of 20 percentage points over the Conservatives for more than a year. Sunak has never enjoyed great popularity, and the party’s hardliners are increasingly questioning his decisions more directly, especially on tax and immigration. The number of letters from deputies to the leadership of the parliamentary group demanding the replacement of the prime minister has not been revealed, but it is known that it is approaching the fateful number of 53, which would automatically trigger a motion of internal censure.
Sunak himself has announced that there will be no general elections until next autumn, but if the municipal elections on May 2 represent a collapse that leads the conservatives to a state of panic, and an internal rebellion is once again forged to change the leader, It would be very tempting for the current prime minister to force an early election.
Of the ten mayoralties that must be renewed, in practically eight of them the victory is predicted for Labor (London, Manchester or Liverpool, the most relevant). The Conservative Party’s attention will focus almost exclusively on the outcome in the West Midlands or Tees Valley, two territories where the right has ruled comfortably, until now.
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Possible punishment for an effective mayor
Paradoxically, Mayor Street, who for almost seven years has prioritized his region over the interests of his party and is a popular and beloved politician, is 14 percentage points behind the Labor candidate, Richard Parker, according to the latest polls. Street, responsible above all for transport infrastructure in the region, has promoted highly relevant projects, and stood up to Sunak when the prime minister announced, last year, that he was freezing the High Speed (HS2) project that he intended to reach, in a second phase, to Manchester. The works on Curzon Station, which will connect Birmingham with London, are already well advanced.
“The West Midlands will definitely be the region whose result will be analyzed in greater detail as soon as citizens vote on May 2. If the conservatives managed to retain that position, they would breathe a little easier. In these local elections it is common for the opposition to obtain good voting figures, and the party in Government can always downplay the importance of defeat. But if citizens decide to punish Sunak by defeating Mayor Street, it will be a bad sign for the tories”explains Tony Travers, professor in the Department of Governance at the London School of Economics (LSE) University.
Morning Express has tried without success to obtain Street’s opinion on a situation, that of the Conservative Party, that clearly damages its expectations.
Birmingham is an exaggerated demonstration of the unbalanced growth that is also happening in London. The city is in a permanent state of construction bustle. You just have to look up, at any point, to see the construction of a new skyscraper in progress. You only have to look down to discover new infrastructure works, whether in tram sections or railway projects.
And yet, the city government has had to declare bankruptcy due to the enormous size of its debt. Up to 600 municipal officials face possible dismissal, and municipal taxes are set to rise by up to 20% over the next two years. The budget cuts will amount to several hundred million euros.
“It may not be entirely fair, but citizens blame this entire situation of misery on the current Conservative Government,” says Andrew, a young Indian who has lived in Birmingham for seven years, where he went to pursue university studies. With the title of Master of Wine In addition to his studies, he works in the distribution and sales business Loki, located in a very popular shopping gallery in the city center. “In this time I have been able to observe first-hand the deterioration. It is incredible how many beggars and homeless people there are now in the city,” he explains.
This correspondent was able to verify that statement firsthand. It is difficult to find any street in the urban center where there is not one or more people asking for money. Many of them on their knees, many with an apparent clearly deteriorated state of mental health.
According to the online polling company YouGov, which in recent years has maintained a complete tracking electoral, the two issues that most concern voters are the economy (50%) and public health (45%). In third place is immigration, with 37%, “but it is not at all clear that it is a real concern, or rather something induced by the Sunak Government and the Conservatives, who have kept this issue at the forefront with the proposal to deport irregular immigrants to Rwanda,” says Sara B. Hobolt, professor of European Politics and Electoral Behavior at the LSE.
It does not seem that this is going to be the question by which Mayor Street will be measured in Birmingham. Only 53% of its inhabitants are white, in a city that has assimilated better than any other in England to Indians, Pakistanis, Chinese, Afro-Caribbeans or Bangladeshis who have enriched its culture to make it one of the most attractive and dynamic cities. from United Kingdom.
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