A day of high drama: Inside the toppling of Andy Street
A day of high drama: Inside the toppling of Andy Street
Labour are jubilant after taking the West Midlands mayoralty. But it went right down to the wire
By Kate Knowles
“For now, he is Mr Nobody,” ran our headline last Friday after we interviewed Labour’s mayoral hopeful Richard Parker. “Next week, he could be our mayor.” Could be, of course, but somehow it didn’t feel likely.
Andy Street may have been behind Parker in a couple of opinion polls, and his Conservative party might have been under water nationally, but the mayor had built an aura of impregnability. He was the first and only mayor of the West Midlands. He bestrode the national political stage, picking a fight with the prime minister at his own party’s national conference. Street had banished the Tory logo and colours from most of his campaign materials because he had built up what any good mayor is supposed to build up: a local, personal vote.
Parker, on the other hand, was a nobody, in relative terms at least, and was cruelly reminded of that fact. “No one’s heard of you. Is that the best Labour can do?” a debate-goer in Hockley barbed last month. He was a management consultant who was deeply loyal to Sir Keir Starmer and lacked the polish and diplomacy of Street. Oh, and he would be leaking votes in large parts of the region because of his party’s ill-judged response to the war in Gaza.
The political commentariat seemed to assume that Street would get home safely, and that his victory — alongside that of Ben Houchen in the Tees Valley — would go some way to sparing Rishi Sunak’s blushes during an otherwise dire set of election results. But it didn’t turn out that way.
While the nation was beginning its bank holiday weekend in gardens and on beaches, we set up camp in the ICC, not realising how long and nail-biting the day would turn out to be.
The wild card
A man in a suit, wearing a scarf adorned in the colours of the Palestinian flag, stands just outside the entrance to the convention centre. He is accompanied by a small group of equally smart men, and cuts a quiet figure, nothing like his bombastic online persona. Inside, throngs of people are gathered, mostly here to support one of the two major parties. Akhmed Yakoob is an outlier. But over the last five weeks, he has had an outsized impact on politics in the West Midlands — especially Labour and its candidate for mayor, Richard Parker.
Reading some of Friday’s headlines, you could have been excused for thinking it was all over for Parker. After several weeks of being neck and neck with Andy Street in the polls, there were early indications Labour had leaked too much of its inner city vote. Voters in majority Muslim areas, unhappy with the party’s stance on the war in Gaza, had let them know about it at the ballot box. “The Labour mood in the room at verification this morning was very downbeat,” a Conservative volunteer in Birmingham told me on Friday.
To make matters worse, a senior Labour source gave an incendiary quote to the BBC, saying that if Street wins, it will be down to the “Middle East, not his success in the West Midlands” and “Hamas are the real villains” (Labour has since condemned the racist comment).
Independent candidate Yakoob had been largely underestimated. The criminal defence lawyer known for his energetic TikTok videos in which he gives legal advice, and posing in front of his lemon-coloured lamborghini, only joined the race in April, standing primarily on a pro-Palestine platform. Though not a member of George Galloway’s Workers Party of Great Britain, Yakoob has enjoyed the Scot’s endorsement. Today he tells me: “I knew that I was going to get that much attention when I set out to do what I did.”
A change in mood
The mayoralty isn’t the only job up for grabs. There’s also the police and crime commissioner (PCC) race, which almost didn’t happen after Street tried to absorb the PCC role last year. Incumbent Labour PCC Simon Foster put a stop to that by taking the government to court and winning.
Contrary to the sombre mood on Friday, Birmingham Labour today are buoyed. One councillor, who tells me he went to bed at 4am and is a little hungover, cheerfully says the PCC election is a shoe-in. As for the mayoral race, a glance around the boxes of ballot papers has him quietly confident Birmingham has gone their way.
It’s when the first mayoral result is announced — after a partial recount — in Solihull at 2.46pm that sharp intakes of breath are heard. As everyone expected, Street has won by a mile — about 24,000 votes, but his lead is down from 2021. The figures aren’t entirely comparable (previously, a first-preference voting system was used whereas today it’s first-past-the-post) but if Street is losing votes in a Tory heartland, that doesn’t bode well.
The PCC result comes and goes — Foster wins by a giant margin. No one is surprised. At 3:50pm, Wolverhampton is announced — an 8,000 lead for Labour and Reform UK have leeched some Tory votes to come in third. Things are looking up for Parker, but it’s the first clear sign of the other big theme of tonight — that the government’s reputation is so tarnished, Street can’t escape undamaged.
Long before this race, the former John Lewis boss positioned himself as a representative of his region before his party. But none more so than during this campaign and it seems there’s no love lost between him and the Conservative hierarchy (as we reported at the time, he was overheard in a restaurant in Acock’s Green recently, telling his partner Michael Fabricant MP: “If I win, it will be in spite of them not because of them.”)
Everyone gathers in the main hall to hear the Birmingham result — which doesn’t come. We speak with Birmingham’s best known historian and Dispatch member Carl Chinn, who is milling about with Shabana Mahmood MP and councillor Waseem Zaffar. Wearing his trademark gold jewellery, Chinn tells me he had to put his support behind Parker because of the high rates of poverty and segregation in the region. “Street’s too focused on fixing the tram in Birmingham, but we need to connect people to the big city, not within it,” he says. It’s the first time he’s backed a political candidate, usually preferring to remain independent. “This time, I had to,” he says.
The recounts
The Birmingham result is nowhere to be seen — and neither is Street. He’s in a private room and has not been seen all day, unlike Parker who is either sitting in a huddle with his team or pacing the corridor nervously. Whispers ripple around the venue that it “must be close” (this phrase will be repeated often over the next few hours). Street must be rattled, because partial recounts are happening across all the remaining boroughs — at Street’s request, a senior Labour source tells ITV.
The mayor’s supporters are just as invested. As a volunteer tells me: “We're all shattered, and we've worked very hard because we really believe that Andy is a great thing for the region.”
When the Birmingham part of the result finally arrives just before 6pm, it’s a comfortable win for Parker with 80,000 votes. But a huge chunk of the vote goes to Yakoob — 40,000 have backed him. He does a victory lap of the press gallery, saying the Labour party has got what it deserves. When I catch up with Parker, he tells me it’s been “an emotional day” and all he’s been able to stomach is a banana.
20 minutes later, Street claims Walsall with a 7,000 lead on Labour but the feeling grows that Yakoob could be the deciding factor. His rising vote tally is a danger to Parker — the assumption being that he is taking more votes off Labour than anyone else.
Word goes round that Sir Keir Starmer is waiting in a parked car, amid the Saturday night revellers on Broad Street, ready to enter the ICC should his man make it to the top spot. But when the Dudley result comes in with a more than 10,000 lead for Street, we’re half convinced we can hear the sound of a motor starting outside — the Labour leader, back on the road to London. Add this to the hung council result in Dudley on Friday (we’ll have a report on that in tomorrow’s Dispatch), and Labour’s hopes of a resounding win in the Black Country have gone limp.
By now, the atmosphere in the building is tense. The Labour crowd spills out onto the landing of the ICC, Parker ensconced on a sofa. The Conservatives mill about at the back of the main hall. All around, people are feverishly doing calculations. There are two results left to come. How many votes does Labour need in Coventry and Sandwell to topple Street?
‘We’ve won’
In the end, it all comes down to Sandwell. After Coventry is announced, we know Parker still needs 11,000 to pass Street. It’s a tall order — in 2021 Labour only won Sandwell by 5,000 votes. But the atmosphere switches again. A Labour staffer is seen fist pumping in the air. I receive messages from absent Labour councillors to say they’ve been called to the ICC. As I approach the excitable crowd on the landing, Birmingham councillor Jamie Tennant beams at me: “We’ve won,” he says. How can he be so sure? He will only repeat: “We’ve won.”
Further down the landing, Reform UK candidate Elaine Williams sits with her agent. Like Yakoob she has been an outlier of this race but she has not enjoyed the same surge in public support. In fact, Yakoob received more votes than her and Green Party candidate Siobhan Harper-Nunes combined. Williams is unimpressed with the politicking she has seen today, calling Street’s request for recounts “clutching at straws”. She points out that only about a third of the region came out to have their say in the polls. “People have become disengaged with politics,” she tells me, insisting — somewhat eccentrically — that today’s result isn’t “what the people want”.
She will find it hard to convince the jubilant crowd of Labour volunteers, MPs and councillors who are soon roaring their support for Parker as he takes to the stage alongside his opponents for the final, official result. When Parker gives his notably generous acceptance speech, he extends his thanks to Street, saying whilst “our politics are different Andy, we both have the best interests of the West Midlands at heart”.
Then the Conservatives in the room — and perhaps a few others, too — give Street a final, fulsome send off. It’s the first time the outgoing mayor has been seen today since his arrival, a contrast to the front man persona he embodied during his two terms in office. Today, he keeps his time in the spotlight short and to the point. “It has been my honour to serve and to lead this place for the last seven years. I hope I have done it with dignity and integrity,” he says.
And before we know it, the two figures are swept up to the press gallery to give their interviews: for Parker his first as mayor-elect, for Street his last. There are already rumours that Street is going to be back — perhaps as MP for Solihull. On social media, he receives an outpouring of good wishes and thanks. It’s been a long night for both men. For Parker, a long road is ahead.
The night ends with a final victory speech, surrounded by his members, and joined by the man tipped to be prime minister by the time the year is out. The West Midlands has been won by a hair’s breadth — just 1,508 votes. 69,621 people have opted for Yakoob and Palestine, not Labour. “I've heard, I've listened and I'm determined to meet their concerns, and also to win back their trust and confidence,” says Starmer to the press huddle. But that’s not all — Dudley Council, the authority Starmer desperately wanted to take back from the Tories, is hung. I ask the Labour leader what he thinks it will take to win back the the Black Country. He says “we’ve shown progress” and “we’re laser-focused” on it.
Unlike Street, Parker is not the most powerful elected member of his party outside of Westminster. He is a relative unknown who has the daunting task of uniting the West Midlands, not just across party lines, but cultural and religious ones. Divisions between poor and rich in the region are stark, and a bloody war being fought thousands of miles away hangs over Birmingham Labour like a massive shadow.
Parker may have been a nobody when I met him last week. But from Tuesday, he will bear the weight of political office on his shoulders. If he’s anything like Street — who many outside of the Conservative Party are paying tribute to today, and who is tipped for higher things — it could be the making of him.
I felt for Andy Street. I don’t share his party’s policies on pretty much anything, despise what they’ve done to … well, pretty much everything, from our NHS to our water to our global reputation. I didn’t vote for Andy. Couldn’t. Despite the claims he was distancing himself from Westminster. And a Labour mayor, even an untried one, has to be a better start with a Labour government. And yet. And yet. Andy felt genuine. He came over as someone who had Brum in his heart. And we need that. More than ever. So … sorry Andy. I’ve no idea whether the best man won. I think a good man just lost (not that our new mayor isn’t!). But your Party has just done too much damage.
Great read! Good work Kate.