It has become a regular feature of my little left-wing snowflake life: waking up, reading election news and shrinking in disappointment for a moment in bed before starting my day.
This morning, when I read my colleague Richard's quite brilliant and easy-to-follow election live blog, it was just how many seats Reform UK had managed to park their bums on that threw me for a loop. Every single one in Tamworth, no fewer than 22 in Dudley and gaining control of Tamworth and Redditch councils too. I had expected some, but not this.
And truth be told, there is a responsibility that some on the left are going to need to take if we are truly asking ourselves why this has happened.
For reference, I am not a Reform supporter for a myriad of reasons, not least of them the fact that I am disabled and Farage's lot have been clear that they find people like me to be 'insane'. When I vote, I tend to think of the least privileged person I know, and I check the box of the candidate I feel could go to bat for them in hopes of changing things for the better. It is not some great selfless act, I just do not think any of us can be truly happy and free until we all are.
And the horrible reality for most Brummies is that misery is on the rise. Freedom feels less within grasp when you are grafting all day every day, working your fingers to the bone with hardly a thing to show for it at the end. Happiness and freedom in Birmingham 2026 are like grains of sand in your hands on the beach (if we are privileged enough to be able to visit one) slipping away with every Council Tax rise, every sickening community centre closure, every loss. And whether you vote Reform or the Greens, we probably all have that in common. We want to be comfortable and safe. We want to feel like life is worth living, that our kids are alright and that we are not in danger.
It is the kind of common ground you would find with people in the pub, in social clubs, on park benches and in the break room at work over your sandwiches. Instead, here in 2026, we find a lot of our social spaces online. In the boozer, you might disagree with someone and say 'do not be daft'. On the internet, it would result in a mass pile-on, death threats, disparaging namecalling and the weaponisation of cutting memes. Playing into such divisive discourse is something the left really needs to face up to when it comes to asking why the right is on the rise.
The political spectrum is a circle, not a line. Go far enough left, or far enough right, and you meet somewhere in the murky underbelly of the great big circle. Fight hard enough, and you will push people there, especially if the ground they are standing on is already shaky and they are sick and tired. Every time you have been online and called your neighbours idiots for putting up Union Jack flags on lamp posts, you have contributed to the rise. Every time you have engaged in down-and-dirty arguments online over semantics of political correctness, or locked horns in 'I am right and you are wrong' rows that you are too pig headed to back down on, you have helped. Every time we have overlooked the hurt at the heart of it all - the worries, the fear and the very human desire for things to change - and disparaged our neighbours for being so stupid, we have fuelled the fire.
As we lose more and more of the shared, real life, offline spaces in which we can chat these things through without it turning into an all-out bost-up, the algorithms are sweeping people away into echo chambers that galvanise their resolve that they are right, and we are wrong. And now, the chickens have come home to roost.
I do not know what is to come for Birmingham, but I could make an educated guess. What I do know is that, as we undergo a period of great change and uncertainty, we need local journalism more than ever. To bring us the truth of what is happening in those council meetings, and to document how all of this is going to impact us regular Brummies. Please consider subscribing to BirminghamLive's Premium offering to enable our reporters to be there, documenting history as it is made. If nothing else, it can fuel your 'I told you so' arguments as reality starts to kick in, wherever on the spectrum you sit!
