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People in the Midlands and poorer regions of Britain think it is the European Union's fault that the regions are lagging behind. They voted for Leave with this perception though as experts point out closing down of plants in the region as in Sunderland could hurt employment.

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Andy Street, Mayor of the West Midlands Combined Authority, says when you consider that London gets 7 times the infrastructure spending per person than West Midlands, "its not bloody surprising" that his region is not growing fast. West Midlands covers a large part of central England, including Wolverhampton, Birmingham and Coventry. Even life expectancy is lower by 8 years in Blackpool, and disposable income can be quarter in Camden compared to North London. Labor's Corbyn and Conservative's Thatcher in the British general election are both campaigning for reviving the regions outside London, that have seen investment in people and technology lag substantially behind London. Regional revival is the big issue in this election. Consider that London which accounted for about 15% of economic output in the 1980's now accounts for nearly 25% of economic output of Britain. Berlin is about 4% of Germany's economy, and Paris 10% of France's economy. A word of caution on Brexit is sounded by experts at the University of Birmingham, who say the whole process of Brexit is so complicated that it may detract from the task of reviving this region. Even though the political upheaval had origins in this discontent, was it more about shifting government attention to the gap between London and the rest of the country, and less about a complex process of withdrawal from the European Union. ...

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British establishment Labour's Mandelson and Conservative's Prince Andrew -the Epstein connections in the Epstein files and the political fallout for Labour and the Conservatives. This happens as they approach local elections with the Greens, Liberals, and Reform UK already taking 50% of Labour's 2024 general election voters with disillusionment over results in the first 2 years of Labour. Labour assumed it had the immigration issue under control with some headline grabbing  stories of it taking tough action when it won in 2024. That has not deterred illegal migrant trafficking. Labour soon lost sight of the ball, and did not realize that the cultural issues around excessive tolerance of such migration itself had not been resolved such as ECHR rights which were completely misinformed when written to approve of such illegal migrants rights and ignore the citizens and women of the neighborhoods in which people had lived for generations. After decade and half of Conservative Cameron austerity Labour needed time to wrestle with the issues of levelling facing Britain's north and the Midlands. Instead Labour found itself on the backfoot and Farage was brought out of retirement after issues in towns like Epping and all across England, where migrants were put in hotels as women and locals loudly disapproved. Labour thought under Conservatives  that over 50,000 were in asylum hotels in 2023 and this has come down to 35,000 in 2025 under Labour, as a kind of improvement not realizing that the public mood questioned the whole idea of the migrants in hotels itself, of little tolerance for any illegal migrants in neighborhoods itself. It shows the political processes have great importance and a series of mediocre leaders from Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson, Sunak, Starmer and Farage over a period of 4 decades can change the trajectory for nations and region. A similar period for India in 1720-1760 with warring factions and regions inviting British East India Company troops to opposing sides fractured the country and led to losing its grip on itself. Gandhiji describes this for introspection in Hind Swaraj (1905) not taking the easy road most now discredited anticolonial writers after 1950 took in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Where does this leave Britain in 2026? It can only come to grips with it knowing that the quality of education, quality of leadership, honesty and introspection of the kind suggested by Teddy Roosevelt in Applied Idealism in his Autobiography, chapter 5, and in Gandhiji's Hind Swaraj are essential.  ...

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Of the 12 regions in the UK the highest vote for Brexit Leave was from the West Midlands region with 59% of the vote for Leave.  This report shows the sentiment in this manufacturing hub is still strong for Leave even though people here are most likely to be hurt by the downturn in the economy. Studies by University of Sussex show a loss of 30,000 jobs or 1.2% of those employed even with asoft Brexit because of supply chains linked to Europe. An outsize hit of 4% is expected with a sudden Brexit. Aircraft workers in Flyde, auto workers in Stratford, workers in the northeast and other regions would also be affected. Risks spook people in Tamworth  where auto plants are located.

Feelings against immigration, for helping the poor and vulnerable, or accomodating British citizens first, were reflected in opinion in the West Midlands.

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Veteran reporter Mark Landler at NYT gives this exceptional report on Bolsover, a town in the Midlands in UK. Natalie Fleet, running for Labour for parliament, is a working class parent and a product of the UK Midlands region, a region around Coventry, Birmingham and Nottingham that was dotted with coal producing mines and industrial towns in the era before World War II. For most of the century till 2019 Labour held the parlamentary seats in this region and in the north of England around Sheffield. It was the loss of these seats that brought first Cameron and then Boris Johnson Tories to power, and where the immigration issue resonated for Nigel Farage's UK Reform movement that led to Britain having a referendum and leaving the European Union.  Today locals think it was all a big mistake, most Britons want to rejoin the EU, and they back Starmer's Labour party by huge margins after Jeremy Corbyn left the leadership position at Labour. Money that was allocated for reviving the town was never spent and the years passed with little change. Labour's Natalie Fleet attends D-Day ceremonies in the region and the one thing that is arousing Britons today is that PM Rishi Sunak chose to leav D-Day ceremonies the same day, ignoring the sacrifices of so many Britons and the need to keep alive the memory of a Europe united against the horrors of the war period- the need to work together make the world a better place. ...

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Shabana Mahmood UK Home Secretary  says -UK "will do whatever it takes to secure our borders," as the Labour Party seeks to meet the challenge from UK Reform Party. Across Europe, in the Netherlands, Italy, France, Germany and UK public opinion is shifting for a tight immigration system. Shabana Mahmood plans to adopt some aspects of Denmark's tight immigration system for UK. Labour MP's in the Red Wall and in places in the Midlands and northern England see this as action needed to prevent UK Reform from winning in this region of England. This has one problem in that Labour has taken too much time to arrive at this point when opinion on illegal immigrants has shifted for many years starting in Denmark. Even Wilders movement in Netherlands is now three years old and DJT's in the US is in its second term going back to 2016 and in a new phase in 2025. One could say that patience is wearing thin among the people in Europe and the US with all forms of illegal immigration whether across the Rio Grande or across the English Channel or across the Mediterranean to Greece and Italy, or across Hungarian border to Germany.  ...

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During the period of lockdown there were some positive changes and people are now looking at how some of these positive changes can be preserved. Drastically cut air pollution and the impact on health is one of these positive changes. People with difficulty breathing in the pollutants in the air had symptoms relieved and now dread going back to the pollution levels they had to get used to. For some lockdown has even given them a break from illness. Many people who experienced the clean air and calm of this period of the virus  are now asking how this can be preserved. In cities like Birmingham polluted air is known to reduce lifespans by 7 months for children. In the UK this is particularly true of the Midlands region with its road and air traffic industries, where there is a nostalgia for the calm people had from the experience of living and working from home. The stresses of capitalism and the rush and pace of life being muted for a while, and a bigger focus on the collective wellbeing and the community. In London and other parts of the UK there is the national debate on how one can continue to make the intelligent choices in the way we live and in the tradeoffs between health and wealth.    ...

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Britain's parliament voted 358 in favor and 234 against to back prime minister Boris Johnson in his effort to get Britain to leave the European Union by January 31, 2020. Negotiation will not be extended beyond 2020. With a comfortable 80 seat majority and many lawmakers newly elected in parliament in favor of Brexit the process appeared easy compared to the problems faced by Theresa May who lacked a majority. In October Mr. Johnson negotiated a deal with the EU which stated how Britain plans to leave the EU. This covered citizens' rights, a financial settlement to leave, and an arrangement to avoid a physical border in Ireland. With another vote in parliament and passage in the House of Lords the process now appears certain to be completed before January end 2020. To get Brexit done Mr. Johnson sought blue collar support in the north of England and the Midlands, a region neglected by Labour and the old Conservatives. Too much of the focus had remained on London. This strategy worked after neglect of working class districts by Labour under Blair and Brown. Mr. Johnson's approach was to commit the Conservatives to new infrastructure spending, spending on schools and the NHS, just as Mr. Trump had done in the U.S. to permanently change the Republican party. This combined with an appeal to patriotism and the idea of Britain drew strong support across England in the election. ...

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Ewen Macaskill of the Guardian travels on the bus with Jeremy Corbyn through the east Midlands region of the UK. He describes how Corbyn is handling the negative media coverage from the Daily Telegraph and the tabloids. Corbyn's response to the demonization by the tabloids underway for the last two years is that he does not let it get to him. He does not respond to personal attacks, including ones made by Theresa May, because he says it means he would have to descend to that level. "It actually devalues yourself and the process," says Corbyn. He is not stressed, says Corbyn because it would do him no good, and no good to the people around him who are putting in their best to support Labor in this election. Calm, composed, is how this reporter sees Corbyn on the trail. This means not following the latest polls but staying focussed on the goal and the day ahead. As a result the people who had only seen him through the negative image projected in the media are now becoming endeared to him. Little things count, whether the campaign workers are getting their tea and coffee, and looking for a knife to cut a chocolate brownie cake given at a prior event. Calm, composed, not letting comments or the pessimism affect him, as he is in his words "there for the long haul." This is true for the way he is careful not to allow intrusions into his family life, that would affect his wife Laura Alvarez and three sons. This is the way he has come across during his first day as Leader of the Opposition in parliament, and during the event where he launched the Labor manifesto. Preferring simplicity and ordinary life he prefers public transport, simple layout in the campaign bus, and if elected he says he would prefer to remain where he is instead of the house at 10 Downing Street. Corbyn is 68, but after the way he has tackled the challenge facing Labor, the graceful attitude and dignity needed especially today, he is likely to be around for much longer. ...