Lewis Goodall

An absolutely massive majority to sort it all out.

Are people on the doorstep saying, oh, I think Keir Starmer's done a great job?

So you can hear from Cotton there another way in which Birmingham politics feels like such a microcosm, to use that word again, of national politics.

You've basically got, as I say, an unpopular incumbent

without a clear sense of ideological direction, talking in very star-marite terms about, in Cotton's case, the character of Birmingham, you know, talking about unity over division.

But in an era where kind of identity politics and those really sharp-edge kind of identitarian themes are so strong...

The question is whether that really cuts it and whether it just sounds sort of deeply nebulous and inchoate and unclear.

And on top of that, you can sort of see Labour struggling to hold on to the sorts of communities in which it had traditionally weighed the votes, specifically as a result of Gaza, Muslim areas, you know, where Labour have dominated and dominated, particularly in cities like Birmingham over recent years.

And that gap, that vacuum, whether it's fair or not, has created the space for people, the sort of people, these Gaza independents, who many people, as I say, are talking about as being a sectarian force, to rise.

And that's also partly maybe not just Labour's fault.

Because in so many ways, one of the kind of curiosities about modern politics, if we're just going to take the question of the Muslim vote, for example, is that in so many ways, you could argue they should be natural centre-right or right-wing voters.

They should be the sorts of people who are generally socially conservative, pro-business, all of these sorts of things.

You would think that they would be natural supporters, maybe, of the Conservative Party.

But it's the Conservative Party...

under Kemi Badenoch in particular, who are constantly talking about Islamism and questions around Islamism and cultural questions which are alienating these voters and potentially in places like Birmingham, alienating them from the Tory party.

Matt Bennett, Conservative councillor for Edgbaston.

Matt, is it going to be chaos in Birmingham after Thursday?

It feels to me that it's got an edge and it's got a certain sort of characteristics that are unlike other parts of the country.

What are we seeing in Birmingham that is a potential portent of other things to come?

And why is that sentiment?