Labour is facing fury today after it emerged more elections are being delayed amid dire polls for Keir Starmer.
Four mayoral contests that were due to be held in May are being pushed back by two years, with accusations that the PM is ‘subverting democracy’.
Essex, Hampshire and the Solent, Sussex and Brighton, and Norfolk and Suffolk, will not vote until 2028.
Ministers argue that more time is needed to finish reorganising local authorities in England.
But Labour is bracing for a hammering in the local elections, as polls show Sir Keir deeply unpopular and his party trailing far behind Reform.
Battles in nine council areas, East Sussex, West Sussex, Essex, Thurrock, Hampshire, the Isle of Wight, Norfolk, Suffolk and Surrey have already been postponed from this year to 2026.
Labour is facing fury today after it emerged more elections are being delayed amid dire polls for Keir Starmer
Nigel Farage has been expecting to make gains in the local elections in May
Reform UK enjoyed success in the local elections last May, winning more than 600 seats and taking control of 10 councils stretching from Kent to Co Durham. The party also toppled a 14,000-strong Labour majority in a parliamentary by-election.
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice this morning accused Sir Keir of ‘running scared’, swiping that ‘generally it’s dictators that cancel elections’.
The Tories also condemned the plans – due to be confirmed to the Commons later.
Shadow housing secretary Sir James Cleverly said: ‘This is a scandalous attempt to subvert democracy by a Labour government whose credibility and popularity are already in tatters.
‘The Conservatives firmly oppose this decision to delay the mayoral elections, especially when candidates have been selected and campaigning is well under way.’
Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrat Local Government spokesperson Zoe Franklin described the proposals as a ‘disgrace’.
She said: ‘Democracy delayed is democracy denied. We are fighting to end this blatant stitch up between Labour and the Conservatives over local elections. The Liberal Democrats will keep working to give millions of people their vote back in May.’
A minister has defended the postponement of some mayoral elections, insisting the Government did not want to ‘rush’ plans to reorganise local authorities.
It was put to children’s minister Josh MacAlister on Sky News that Nigel Farage had said the move was the action of ‘despots, not democrats,’ to which he replied: ‘Well, I say, Nigel, pull the other one.
‘I represent a constituency in Cumbria. We’re going to have a mayoral election in Cumbria. The reason we’re going ahead in 2027 it’s all very technical, but the reason we’re going ahead in 2027 is that we have unitary local authorities that have already been reorganised.
‘The other parts of the country that are having a postponement have still got districts and county levels to be reorganised a year in a row… The last government had 14 years to do devolution properly and got barely anywhere with it, so we’re speeding this up in a major way, pushing power down to communities.
‘Doing that means elected mayors, yes, but also getting money into these areas for new economic regeneration. And the final thing is, the people who are saying this are the same people who, not that many years ago, were proroguing Parliament. We will take no lectures from these people about democracy, protecting it, freedom of speech and all the rest of it.’
Asked whether he could see how it looked suspicious amid Labour’s slump in the polls and speculation about the prospect of a leadership challenge following the local elections, the children’s minister said: ‘There are elections taking place next year. Local authorities, where they’re still in two tiers, and they haven’t reorganised that basic foundation of being a unitary council – it would be a rush to push for that now, rather than get it right. But we’re not delaying the money that’s going into those communities.’
