Reform Can Challenge Starmer’s Cancellation of Elections, Judge Rules
Reform can challenge Sir Keir Starmer’s attempt to cancel some local elections in May amid public disquiet over the threat to democracy, a High Court judge has ruled. The Telegraph has more.
In a ruling at the High Court, Mr Justice Chamberlain cleared the way for Nigel Farage’s party to go ahead with the next stage of a legal case against the Government.
Sir Keir was preparing to postpone polls for thousands of voters using an obscure clause in the 2000 Local Government Act. Labour faced a potential wipe-out if elections in their areas were to go ahead.
The Telegraph’s Campaign for Democracy has called for the clause to be scrapped and for ministers to seek a full Parliamentary vote for any delays.
The legal challenge was brought earlier this month by Reform UK against the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.
The Telegraph understands there will now be a full hearing on the issue on February 19th and February 20th.
The Government claimed that it needed to give some councils the option of delaying elections because they are facing major restructuring under a programme to abolish some district councils and introduce mayoralties.
However, the Electoral Commission, the independent watchdog, has suggested this does not constitute the sort of “exceptional circumstance” that would justify postponement.
Zia Yusuf, Reform’s Head of Policy, welcomed the news that the High Court “temporarily halted” Starmer’s party from making any changes to election dates.
He added: “Reform will defend democracy against this authoritarian government and its Tory enablers. Let the people vote.”
Almost four million people across the south and east of England could be denied a vote as a result of Labour’s attempt to cancel elections.
Twenty-eight councils applied to postpone the elections, scheduled for May, with 22 of them being Labour-run.
On Tuesday, Darren Jones, the Prime Minister’s Chief Secretary, suggested it would be too “costly” for the elections to go ahead.
If residents were to vote in the May elections, Mr Jones said they would have to “redo it five minutes later” because of the reorganisation of councils, which would waste resources.
He told LBC: “We’re not frightened of democracy. Councils themselves were able to request a delay, a short delay, to their elections, if they’re going through a reorganisation. And a number of councils have asked for that.”
Worth reading in full.
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Last year when I mentioned cancellation of last year’s elections to the Tory county councillor she whined that it would have been a waste of £10,000. You can bet that Surrey County pisses away that amount quite easily on pointless things. We know the real reason is that here and in the Sussexes, the lame Tories will get a kicking by Reform.
£10k. Remember that number and who said it and when. If they get their delay then next time they vote through something that costs anything like that amount or more we need to remind the public that that’s ‘x’ times more than the cost of an election.
(Where ‘x’ is a large number tending toward infinity).
That figure sounds about right – a drop in the ocean. Don’t they mainly use council owned venues for the activities and council employees to do the counting? The main cost is presumably printing some poll cards.
Ten thousand pounds is the amount paid to the Chief Executive of Oldham Council for the onerous “task” of overseeing the elections 🤔
Flaming Nora! Firkin’ madness.
As long as it’s the right sort of democracy.
If residents were to vote in the May elections they might elect councillors who can influence the way the Unitary or Mayoral Authority is set up.
In one respect, I suppose, he’s not wrong: it IS a waste of resources.
But, on the other hand, it also demonstrates clearly the incompetence of those involved, that they couldn’t plan the changes to accommodate the election cycles.
A new set of councillors might decide that expenditure proposed by the outgoing councillors is no longer required thereby saving ratepayers a bloody fortune.
If the Councils really can’t do two things at once …. hold an election and plan for a re-organisation …. then the re-organisation should be delayed since there is no fixed timescale for it to be completed …. whereas local elections do have a fixed timescale.
I’m sure that’s the only reason these Councils, at the behest of the Government, were intending to cancel democracy.
This petition needs to become better supported*. At present there is no statutory provision for Councillors to be subject to a recall petition should they fail to serve their constituents, and cannot be removed in the same way as an MP.
Might be useful for the people of Crowborough, who are being failed by their elected representatives?
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/740919
*No connection other than supporting and signing.
Do the people who are having their rural councils abolished actually want their rural councils abolished? To cancel these elections will deny those people their democratic right to have a say on the issue. After all it was not in Labour’s manifesto. Labour argues that the elections could be disruptive, I thought that was the whole point of a democracy.
“The Government claimed that it needed to give some councils the option of delaying elections because they are facing major restructuring”
But they DIDN’T need to give votes in these councils the choice as to which party implemented them.
Wonder why?