SPECIAL REPORT: An election like no other in Birmingham
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 7 May 2026
⏱️ 50 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s polling day in elections across Great Britain. Labour is braced for a battering, at the hands of insurgent forces on every side. Birmingham is a microcosm of that picture: an unloved Labour administration dealing with complex problems and complex politics.
But here it’s not just the Greens and Reform the party must contend with, but the rise of the so-called Gaza independents. A new political force appealing largely to British Muslims who, like everyone else, are disatissfied with the status quo.
Is this really a new sectarian politics, as the newspapers suggest? And if it is - should we be concerned about who is propelling those forces? With the control of the biggest local authority in Europe up for grabs, Lewis has gone home to England’s second city to find out.
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK commercial banking, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:10.0 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:13.1 | Dancing in the middle of stage with naked men in front of little children. |
| 0:16.8 | You'd compare yourself to Nelson Mandela. |
| 0:19.2 | I'm not saying I'm not saying I'm follow people like that. You do think you're a great man? Of course. Pretty anti-Semitic to suggest that there are Zionist puppet masters who have control the media. The whole media is like that because you try to push a certain narrative. You have people like Jimmy Saville around here and then you're trying to target me? Louis, come,? What's Jimmy Saville got to do with the Epstein Fowles or the Zionist class? |
| 0:40.3 | He was a close friend of Kea Stamas. |
| 0:42.3 | No, he wasn't. |
| 0:43.3 | Of course he was. |
| 0:44.3 | No, he wasn't. |
| 0:45.3 | That's just a conspiracy nonsense. |
| 0:46.3 | I say the conspiracy, everything you say is not. |
| 0:48.3 | The news agents. |
| 0:52.3 | For those watching, no, it's not a The News Agents |
| 0:54.2 | For those watching, no, it's not about me. |
| 0:59.5 | What you just heard was the sound of politics in Birmingham in 26. |
| 1:06.9 | And what you're about to hear in today's special local and national elections episode is how, in so many ways, culturally, politically, economically, socially. |
| 1:21.6 | The politics of Birmingham in 26, we think is so likely to be coming for the politics near you, for the national |
| 1:32.3 | politics of the UK. Welcome to the newsagents. So we're talking about chaos in Birmingham for a very good reason, |
| 1:41.1 | or are they not just Birmingham? Because it's important as Birmingham is, you know, the biggest local authority in the country, huge city and so on. The reason |
| 1:46.8 | that it really matters in terms of the potential politics in Britain to come is that Birmingham |
| 1:52.7 | is a microcosm of the politics of Britain to come. Birmingham is huge and it's deeply diverse and as a result it has every shade, every |
| 2:04.1 | characteristic, every combination of politics that the rest of the country has in aggregate. So you've |
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