Starmer Abandons Plan to Cancel Local Elections
Sir Keir Starmer has abandoned plans to cancel local elections in May “in light of recent legal advice”, reversing the decision to delay them in 30 local authorities until 2027. The Telegraph has more.
Elections in 30 local authorities will now go ahead, reversing the decision to delay them until 2027.
The Prime Minister’s latest U-turn follows the launch of the Telegraph’s Campaign for Democracy, which called for the delayed elections to go ahead this year.
The Labour Government had justified the delays by claiming that a looming reorganisation of local authorities would make elections expensive, complicated and unnecessary. However, it was accused of disenfranchising 4.6 million voters to avoid a wipeout by Reform UK on May 7th.
The policy reversal – which emerged two hours after Sir Keir had suggested he was done with U-turns – was announced in a letter from Steve Reed, the Local Government Secretary, before a legal challenge by Reform later this week.
Reed said the Government had made its decision after receiving “recent legal advice” that the delays were illegal.
The letter said: “The Secretary of State has decided to withdraw his decision to postpone the council elections of 30 local councils due to take place in May 2026 in the light of recent legal advice.”
It also confirmed that the Government would pay Reform’s legal costs for mounting the challenge. The policy reversal will pile pressure on Sir Keir to justify the initial decision.
Nigel Farage, the Reform leader, had compared Labour’s decision to one of a “dictator”, and announced that his party would contest the delays in court.
Farage suggested that Reed should resign over the fiasco, saying: “It’s a victory for Reform – but more importantly, it’s a victory for democracy in this country. We are delighted.
“I think for a Minister to do something that is clearly unlawful, otherwise they would not have gone and withdrawn themselves from the case on Thursday… Seems to me that if a Government Minister does something illegal, they really ought to resign.”
On Friday, Vijay Rangarajan, the Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission, told the Telegraph that the delays to elections were wrong and the Government did not have a “sufficient” justification for pushing them back to 2027.
He also argued that giving councillors the power to recommend delays to elections was a “conflict of interest” because it allowed them to avoid angry voters.
Labour is expected to lose swathes of seats to Reform in the local elections. Last month, polling for the Telegraph found that its majorities on 10 councils would be wiped out if the delayed elections went ahead on schedule.
Councils now have to prepare for elections ahead of May 7th. It is understood that around £63 million will be provided to the local authorities that were going to be affected to make sure they can deliver the elections and the reforms.
Worth reading in full.
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How does one know that 2TK is going to reverse a decision ?
A : he states categorically that he will not do so.
What a total waste of oxygen this man is.
How has our country ended up with PM so contemptible, so morally void, and so deeply inadequate?
Well he’s a lawyer first and foremost. A human rights one, at that. Not much cop as a leader, that’s for sure. Just to have a PM who is a patriot would be a good start.
Aim high, vote Lowe.😁🇬🇧🏴
😀😀😀
Go large, vote Farage!
I find it peculiar that something that has few, if any, human traits is a human rights lawyer.
A good question. The real answer is “because of the morally corrupt, grossly incompetent and deceitful Conservatives”. We must never lose sight of the fact that 2TK and his ghastly associates are only in power because the entire country refused to vote any longer for the Tories — and so stayed at home at the last General Election. 2TK’s Labour Party gained far fewer votes than the Corbynistas at the previous election. The country didn’t positively vote for Labour (they received support from only 20% of the electorate), it just refused to vote any longer for the shysters running the Tory party.
Why would someone give a downvote to your comment..?? 🤔
Thanks. I dunno. Bizarre. I was merely stating established facts, which are often overlooked !
It was the perfect storm of voter apathy, protest voting, and the remaining segment of the electorate who still voted with their tribes in blind faith and ignorance.
Because Reform UK were not ready for the election. A fact which Sunak was relying on.
Sure they had candidates but almost none with any government experience. They’d mentioned a few policies but with no details on how they’d implement them.
I think Reform are distinctly more ready now and hope they’ll be even more so when Labour finally gets sick of being told how shite they are – or runs out of time. I actually expect Labour will push it to the limit before calling the next General Election as I don’t see any chance of their performance or prospects improving.
It was the strangest decision by Sushi to rush to the polls since as soon as he did so the economy took a turn for the better – not that the Tories had done anything to bring this about. Inflation was falling and there would have been an interest rate cut that was put off by the BoE because to the election. Waitng might have lost the Tories a lot fewer seats so no wonder his MPs were unhappy at the early election call. I think any 2024 election would have been too early for Reform as they needed to build up their local government seats first.
… to name but a few…
14 years of left wing Tories.
Presumably the Councillors declared their conflicts of interest when they considered the proposals to recommend cancellation.
I wonder why tax payers are subsidising Councils. Is it not their role to hold elections so should they not budget for that. Is the newly announced funding of £63million only to the 30 councils or will those who previously planned elections also get £2 million each.
BTW how can the marginal costs of local elections amount to £2 million. The staff are often re-assigned from other council duties, the electoral register and training have to be kept up to date regardless.
What is £2 million for. Ballot papers can’t cost much nor do polling stations (many of which are council owned). There are additional staff for manning the stations and doing the count. A few posters. I’m running out of additional costs.
On the PM programme on R4 it was mentioned that it’s likely to ramp up the printing costs given the shorter than normal schedule to get all the paperwork done in time. It might depend on the methods used – either in house or contracted out, e.g. But no printing firm would do it on the cheap, if there is no alternative.
The other area of interest may be what the Parties will do, if they assumed that there wouldn’t be an election. They’ll have to select appropriate candidates, e.g. Interesting times.
As you point out many of the polling stations are owned by the councils. If the Returning Officer takes over those venues then the council can’t rent them out to any local businesses or citizens at around the time of the vote. This is lost revenue so the local government claims recompense from central…
Don’t mention that the chances of anyone wanting to hire the side room at the local community centre are almost nil… It’s lost revenue I tell you.
The council workers who man the polling stations get an extra payment because they are required to work a longer day.
Makes up for some of the paid time they spend walking the dog, laundry, gym, Netflix, food prep and the rest when they are meant to be ‘working’ from home
The issue of the £63 million is a salient point and it deserves answering. My view is that it is just a money laundering exercise like most government excuses for expenditure and of course the burden will be loaded on to taxpayers either nationally or locally via council tax increases.
U-turning on not U-turning. It is beyond parody.
He’s doing doughnuts.
That is excellent news, but I cannot help wondering why the Chief Executive of the UK Electoral Commission is an Ethnic Indian Tamil from India, and what makes him so keen to see the UK local elections go ahead. Here are a few hints about electoral fraud in India’s Tamil Nadu, and the large numbers of British Tamils running for local elections in the UK:
Record level of British Tamils run for local election | Tamil Guardian
India Risks Losing Democratic Status Amid Widespread Election Fraud Allegations – RMN Foundation
Deleted Votes, Imported Voters — How India’s Election System was hijacked in Tamil Nadu
EC to begin electoral roll revision in TN by next week amid vote fraud allegations
Rare feat as Mayor of Crawley is elected for a second year
Here is the Tamil Lord Mayor of Crawley in Sussex, Sharmila Sivarajah, who will be up for re-election again in May, wearing an Indian variation of English Mayoral attire, though traditional Mayors of English towns do not normally expose their bare midriffs:
A few years back I ventured into the ASDA in Crawley and it was like being in another country. About the only other English person was the woman on the till. It was as if parts of our country are being colonised…..
Your personal experience is important in showing the real, appalling situation to those of us who have never visited those places, and had no idea the invasion had reached such shocking levels.
How soon will the much vanted Breakfast Clubs be closed down!
Government headed by former barrister and DPP, that cancelled local elections due to local government re-structuring initiated by aforesaid government, now reinstates elections after seeking legal advice it omitted to seek in the first place.
Once a laughing stock, always a laughing stock.
He’s a laugh a minute that Keir Backtracking Starmer. Does he really have any idea?
You’d think the Prime Lawyer squatting in No.10 would have known that blatantly cancelling elections which your Party expects to lose would be illegal. I guess he thought the Electoral Commission and the Courts could be trusted to “have his back.”
That’s another fine mess he’s got into: Stan Laurel strikes again.
Well done to Farage/Reform for using “The Law” against the Prime Lawyer.
When even the lawyers are jumping ship it is time for the Prime Lawyer to ‘retire’.
After all these U Turns because they see where they are in the polls when are they going to just U Turn on actually being the government and call an election. —–No one wants them.
🗳 Vote Reform UK 🇬🇧 as if your life depends on it, because it does..
Did the Conservative Party take Starmer to court?. They were in on the scam.
I’m wondering if local electorates might like to be asked whether or not they want to be reorganised.
All this tells me that the council elections in the affected areas had always been perfectly possible, justifiable and affordable – business as usual, but Starmer decided he would give councillors the opportunity to shirk their responsibility to hold them because they’re so afraid of the Reform gains.
Keir Starmer is actually a blessing in disguise: He is delivering a masterclass in Why Socialism can Never Work, by demonstrating everything that is wrong with it in just a few short years!
The Conservatives took quite a while to make themselves unelectable. Labour have done it very quickly. But these “few short years” feel very long, especially when you consider how much longer this government is entitled to remain in power.
Don’t worry… there’s only 1,233 days left to go!