Major Boost to Reform as Labour Abandons Plans to Cancel Local Elections

Keir Starmer’s flailing government has been forced to U-turn on its plan to cancel local elections in 30 councils this May after being threatened with a legal challenge from Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.

The housing and local government department said on Tuesday this decision—Starmer’s 14th-plus major U-turn since ‘taking control’ in July 2024—was made after it received “new legal advice” on the matter.

Farage has described the postponing of elections for 4.6 million people as “a desperate act from a desperate prime minister, who is now willing to do anything to save his own skin,” and said in Tuesday’s Telegraph that Local Government Secretary Steve Reed had been “illegally” delaying voting and “must resign.”

Whether Reed succumbs to such pressure or not, it already seems clear that Reform—ahead in almost all the polls—has benefited quite significantly from this latest U-turn.

Out of the councils where elections will now take place in just a few months’ time, 21 are currently led by Labour. Even the strongly left-leaning Guardian newspaper accepted that “Farage’s party was already expecting to make significant gains in England in May at the expense of the Tories, but Monday’s decision appears to have expanded his horizons.”

Reform will no doubt also have been pleased to read in the department’s letter announcing the change that the government will pay Reform’s legal costs—amounting to £150,000 (€171,500)—for mounting the challenge.

The news, said Farage, is a “victory for democracy.” And, of course, another major blow for Labour—as if it could take any more.