Reform UK says Britain is broken. Birmingham tells another story

Published On 6 Sep 20266 Sep 2026.

What happened

This week, Reform UK gathered thousands of supporters at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre to present itself as a government-in-waiting. This was not a sudden interest in Britain's second-biggest city: Reform has repeatedly applied Birmingham for national campaign launches and conferences, committing considerable resources to making it a showcase for its advance.

Birmingham – young, working-class, multiracial and almost evenly divided between residents recorded as white and those from Black, Asian, mixed and other ethnic groups – is precisely the kind of city Reform leader Nigel Farage's politics portrays as a warning: a place where an older Britain has supposedly been displaced by an alien new one.

The bottom line

Taken together, the developments around reform UK says Britain is broken. Birmingham tells another story point to a situation that is still moving, and the coming days should bring more clarity.