Banned in Birmingham: What happened when Lewis clashed with ‘Gaza independent’
Lewis Goodall returns to his hometown of Birmingham, seen as a microcosm of politics, to explore how local elections reflect what’s happening at a national level in the UK.
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In brief…
- Lewis Goodall was banned from a local cafe while visiting Birmingham after a clash with Akhmed Yakoob, who placed second as an independent candidate in the Ladywood constituency in the 2024 general election.
- The city’s Labour council is predicted to take major losses in the local elections, reflecting expectations from across the country.
- Lewis says mainstream politicians are in part to blame, leaving a political “vacuum” through a lack of both a coherent message and any way of articulating it to voters.
What’s the story?
When Lewis Goodall returned to his home city this week ahead of the local elections, he ended up being banned from a local cafe when an interview turned sour.
Birmingham is considered by many, not least Lewis himself, as a microcosm of British politics, where populism is defeating liberalism, and where politicians get personal, and where allegations of sectarianism are creeping into its day to day running.
The city has been under Labour control since 2012, but in this time it has amassed the greatest debt of any city in the UK – an estimated £3.35 billion – all while facing large-scale bin strikes which have left rotting waste piled high in its streets.
Like many others, its Labour leadership is tipped for an absolute battering in the local elections.
“Birmingham is huge, and it's deeply diverse,” Lewis says.
“As a result, it has every shade, every characteristic, every combination of politics that the rest of the country has in aggregate.”
But unlike other parts of the UK, Birmingham’s large Muslim population has also given rise to a number of local MPs who have campaigned primarily on the war in Gaza, which has seen them labelled as “Gaza independents”.
“Some people call this a rise of a sectarian force in British politics,” Lewis adds.
The council’s Labour leadership, he says, is considered to have done “a bad job”.
“Unpopular incumbent with new political actors gnawing away at its coalition at every edge – sound familiar?”
Muslim votes and the clash in the cafe
In 2024, Labour's Shabana Mahmood clinched a narrow victory in the constituency of Ladywood, which has a 49% Muslim population.
Mahmood won 15,558 votes, ahead of Independent candidate Akhmed Yakoob, who received 12,137.
Yakoob is not able to to run for any position in the local elections, due to an ongoing criminal trial over money laundering allegations, but he has become the defect head of a number of independent MPs across Birmingham in 2026.
"He finds himself at the centre of these campaigns across the country, coordinating so-called 'Gaza Independents'," says Lewis.
"I'm told that there are officials in Whitehall who are genuinely concerned about the outcome of these local elections in Birmingham, because it's the biggest local authority in Europe.
"It's got a budget of billions of pounds, and they're convinced that this is the guy who's going to do everything he can to put sand in the gears of the administration locally via an obsession, as they would see it, with Middle East issues."
And it is while meeting Yakoob, (for the second time for The News Agents), that things turned ugly.
During the interview he called Green Party leader Zack Polanski a “degenerate”, accusing him of pandering to Muslim voters, “dancing with naked men” in public, and being an unsuitable candidate to be around young children.
The interview ended in Lewis being banned from a cafe in Birmingham, a first for his career, he says.
"Imagine after this election – where there is likely to be a hung council – five, 10, 15, or, even more, of Mr. Yaqoob's independent party members sitting as councillors," Lewis says.
"That's the sort of thing we might expect – or at least a version of it."
Can Birmingham's diversity be celebrated and protected?
Mainstream party members tell The News Agents that they remain hopeful for a more cohesive council in Birmingham than the one Yaqoob may be pushing for.
Council leader John Cotton says Birmingham’s strength is its diversity, but sees sectarian politics creeping into the city, blaming “divisive narratives” created by both independent and Reform representatives.
He singles out Robert Jenrick’s comments, made in 2025 after visiting Handsworth and claiming to have seen “no white faces” as “utterly false” and “clearly designed to turn communities against each other.”
“We've got people of all faiths and from all sorts of backgrounds who've made their home here in Birmingham, we've got very strong, vibrant communities, and a brilliant, thriving voluntary sector,” Cotton says.
"The vast majority of Brummies of all backgrounds, of all communities, want to keep that unity. They value the diversity of the city.
"They value the youth of the city, and that's what we've got to protect."
Edgbaston Tory councillor Matt Bennett describes some of Birmingham's independent candidates as "slightly unpleasant", claiming they are trying to appeal to people based on their religion, rather than how a council can run decent services for all its population.
He also disagrees with his own party having targeted particular religious groups with political adverts.
Green councillor Julian Pritchard describes some of Yaqoob’s politics as “divisive” and “nasty”, and says that the Greens would refuse to negotiate or work with his independent, or Reform councillors, due to their views, particularly on LGBTQ+ rights.
"That sort of attack and language is why we just don't think we can really work with his group at all," Pritchard says of the comments made about Zack Polanski.
"We want to really focus on positive things, what we can do for the city, and what we can push and campaign for."
"It's cleaning up streets, getting the roads. It's those sorts of bread and butter issues. But in doing it in a way which brings people together."
Reform declined to speak with The News Agents.
The vacuum in British politics – and who's filling it
But while Lewis’s meeting with Yaqoob ended badly, he says there is one thing the Birmingham disruptor has over his mainstream opponents, and that’s knowing what he wants to say, and precisely how he wants to say it.
"We have mainstream politicians, from Keir Starmer down, who appear very often to have little to say, and in that vacuum, we see Yaqoob, we see Nigel Farage and Reform," Lewis says.
"We've had 20 years of declining or stagnant living standards, during which you can see the products of the rancid fruits of all around us in this city and beyond.
"Until such time as mainstream politics – and centre left politics and center right politics has something to say about that, and crucially, something to do, the Yaqoobs, the Farages, whoever will fill the gap and will keep getting bigger and run our politics away with them."