Labour will delay elections for 29 councils in a bid to “repair the broken foundations of local government”, the Government has announced – the second year that elections have been postponed amid a Labour slump in the polls. The Telegraph has more.
Steve Reed, the Local Government Secretary, told the Commons on Thursday that 29 areas would have their elections postponed and would not go ahead as planned in May.
He said he had “listened to what councils have told me” and had assessed more than 350 representations from local authorities.
Mr Reed said that out of 136 scheduled local elections, “the vast majority will go ahead as planned”.
Ministers have insisted that some local elections needed to be delayed to allow for a reorganisation of local government.
Some areas have two tiers of councils, with each tier handling different responsibilities. Ministers are replacing these with single unitary authorities which handle all local government services.
Reed and Sir Keir Starmer are relying on an obscure clause in the 2000 Local Government Act, which gives ministers the power to delay votes if there are exceptional circumstances.
The Telegraph has launched a Campaign for Democracy which calls for the clause to be scrapped. That would force ministers to seek a full vote in Parliament for any delay to elections.
Robert Jenrick, now an MP for Reform UK after his defection last week, said Steve Reed’s delays to local elections were “almost certainly illegally”.
Firstly would the Secretary of State stop saying this is a locally-led process? The power rests solely with him and each of these decisions is his decision and his decision alone.
Secondly, the real question here is why to delay for a second year? When I was secretary of state the legal advice that I received, including from Sir James Eadie, the Government’s chief legal adviser, was that it was not legally sustainable to delay for a second year. Hence, we didn’t, even during Covid we kept the elections going…
What the Secretary of State is doing is almost certainly illegal. If he is so confident of his position, publish his legal advice, and publish the legal advice that I received and the prime minister when we decided not to delay for a second year. Then we might be able to have faith in what he’s doing.
Richard Tice, Reform UK’s deputy leader, told Steve Reed:
A year ago, the then deputy prime minister assured us and promised us that none of the then delays would be for more than a year. And yet five of the current 29 that are going to be delayed are from last year.
And 21 of the 29 are Labour-controlled councils. The Secretary of State is aware that we have a judicial review that is due to be heard in February. And I obviously don’t want him to comment on the case.
But can he confirm that, as the Government believes in the rules-based order, that this Government will adhere to and comply with the rulings of the judge?
The full list of councils where legislation will be brought forward to postpone local elections is:
- Adur
- Basildon
- Blackburn
- Burnley
- Cannock Chase
- Cheltenham
- Chorley
- City of Lincoln
- Crawley
- East Sussex
- Exeter
- Harlow
- Hastings
- Hyndburn
- Ipswich
- Norfolk
- Norwich
- Peterborough
- Preston
- Redditch
- Rugby
- Stevenage
- Suffolk
- Tamworth
- Thurrock
- Welwyn Hatfield
- West Lancashire
- West Sussex
- Worthing
Worth reading in full.
See Related Article Below
If Labour thinks Reform is ‘fascist’, what should we call a party that cancels elections?
Despite what Starmer’s ministers would have us believe, there’s only one leader that is a threat to democracy
Keir Starmer’s administration is preventing almost four million people from voting in local council elections this May Credit: Henry Nicholls/ WPA Pool/Getty
Would you like Nigel Farage to be prime minister? If so, a senior Labour minister has a terrifying warning for you. During an interview with Sky News on Sunday, Lisa Nandy, the Culture Secretary, was asked whether it was true that she thinks a Reform government would be “fascist”. To which Ms Nandy gnomically replied: “If it walks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, in my experience it usually is a duck.”
I’m sure the public will be grateful for her wise and fair-minded counsel. I’ve got just one small question.
If Labour thinks Reform is “fascist”, what should we call a party that cancels elections?
I only ask because, historically speaking, cancelling elections is something that fascists have tended to be fairly keen on. And I can’t help suspecting that, if a Reform government were to cancel elections, senior Labour figures would scream to high heaven about a shocking fascist plot to destroy democracy. Meanwhile, pro-Labour pundits would be likening Mr Farage to Hitler even more frenziedly than they do already.
Yet, in the year 2026, there’s only one British party that is stopping voters from voting. And that’s the party to which Ms Nandy so proudly belongs. As The Telegraph’s Campaign for Democracy has made clear, Labour is using an obscure clause in the 2000 Local Government Act to enable at least 27 councils to cling to power by preventing elections from being held this May. The vast majority of these councils, curiously enough, just happen to be run by Labour. And polling has suggested that, if the elections went ahead, Labour would lose half the seats it was due to defend.
Labour’s excuse is that postponing elections is necessary, because councils need extra time to undergo essential “restructuring” (a process which, you may recall, was instigated by Labour). And anyway, while this essential “restructuring” is going on, holding elections would be “costly” and “time-consuming”. So, whatever you do, please don’t listen to anyone who tells you that the Government is actually engaged in a breathtakingly cynical ploy to kill Reform’s momentum and prevent Sir Keir Starmer from facing the leadership challenge that would inevitably follow a string of humiliating defeats in May. Perish the thought. After all, only a fascist regime would behave like that.
Admittedly, the Government’s case was somewhat undermined last month, when no less a figure than the head of the Electoral Commission said Labour’s reason for delaying elections was not “legitimate”.
The Government, however, has evidently decided to disregard this objection. Again, you might think that disregarding objections from the independent body specifically created to oversee free and fair elections is the sort of thing that fascists would do. But clearly it’s different when it’s Labour.
Of course, I appreciate that “fascist” is a label that’s unlikely to stick to Sir Keir. For one thing, fascists tend to be brutally intimidating strongmen, not pathetically wittering dweebs. So, if we are indeed in the grip of a tyrant, he’s an unusually weedy one.
But in any case, my point is not that Sir Keir is a fascist. It’s that Labour has some brass neck to go around smearing its opponents as fascists when, at the exact same time, it’s depriving almost four million people of their right to vote. And ministers need to realise that we’re not going to stand for it.
Since they plainly haven’t grasped just how angry people are, perhaps we should put it like this. If they think it’s perfectly acceptable to delay our elections, how would they feel if we all decided to delay paying our taxes? Shall we update the old Tea Party mantra of “No taxation without representation”, and chant “No council elections, no council tax”? Shall we airily inform Labour that paying our taxes would be “costly” and “time-consuming”?
The Telegraph: continue reading
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