Ministers pressed ahead with cancelling local elections in dozens of mostly Labour areas on Thursday – despite warnings the move is ‘almost certainly illegal’.
Communities secretary Steve Reed said polls will be postponed in 29 local authorities this May to free up resources for a costly shake-up of local government.
The move will deprive 3.7million of the vote, but could boost Keir Starmer‘s chances of survival.
Some 21 of the councils involved are currently controlled by Labour – more than two-thirds of the total. In some cases, the elections are being delayed for a second consecutive year.
A final decision on whether to go ahead with elections for Essex County Council was delayed following a last-minute submission, but the council’s Tory leader insisted it had ‘never asked for a postponement’.
Polls suggest Labour is on course to take a drubbing in this May’s elections, and the contests are widely seen as a litmus test of Sir Keir’s survival prospects.
Although most elections will still go ahead, Thursday’s decision on delays could limit Labour’s losses – and deprive Reform UK of the chance to gain further political momentum against both Labour and the Conservatives.
Mr Reed insisted the process for delay was ‘locally led’ – and said holding elections for councils that are due to be abolished could slow down vital reforms that will save money in the long run.
Labour’s move will deprive 3.7million of the vote, but could boost Keir Starmer’s (pictured) chances of survival
Robert Jenrick, who defected to Reform last week, said: ‘When I was secretary of state, the legal advice that I received, including from the government’s chief legal adviser, was that it was not legally sustainable to delay for a second year’
Shadow communities secretary Sir James Cleverly said the scale of the cancellations was unprecedented – and accused Mr Reed of political ‘cowardice’.
Addressing him in the Commons, Sir James said: ‘What was it about Labour’s collapse in the opinion polls that first attracted him to the idea of cancelling elections?’
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice said: ‘Dictators cancel elections.’
Nigel Farage has branded the decision the act of a ‘banana republic’ – and has already launched legal action to force the elections to go ahead.
The Electoral Commission has said the delays are not justified and warned that they risked ‘damaging public confidence’.
The watchdog, which oversees elections in the UK, said it did not think ‘capacity constraints are a legitimate reason for delaying long-planned elections’.
Mr Reed said council elections had been postponed by previous Conservative governments during periods of local government reorganisation.
But Robert Jenrick said the scale of the postponement was far greater than in the past – and said there was no precedent for cancelling elections two years running.
Mr Jenrick, who defected to Reform last week, served as communities secretary in the last Conservative government.
He told MPs: ‘When I was secretary of state, the legal advice that I received, including from 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. Did not delay for two years.
‘What the Secretary of State is doing is almost certainly illegal.’
Florence Eshalomi, Labour chair of the Commons housing, communities and local government committee, warned that ‘democracy is not an inefficiency that should be cut out’ during the reorganisation process.
She said councils ‘should not have to face choosing between frontline services or elections’.
