Labour’s elections U-turn could cost it more than the £100,000 legal bill
Dozens of councils now have just weeks to prepare for local elections. One of the party’s MPs called the backtrack ‘a total own goal’
Outrage within Labour’s ranks is rarely in short supply these days. But the fury that greeted Monday’s U-turn on local election postponements carries a different edge — this time, MPs aren’t just angry at the headlines, but also frustrated that the government has handed Nigel Farage his best story of the year and paid his legal fees while doing it.
On Monday, local government secretary Steve Reed confirmed that the government was abandoning its plans to postpone local elections in 30 areas of England that had been scheduled for May.
The reversal — which will mean 4.5 million people who had been told they would not vote this year will now get a say on who runs their local councils after all — came after Reform UK launched a judicial review of the decision to postpone. What was contained within the advice that the government’s own lawyers then provided has not been made public, but the U-turn suggests that they concluded the original decision would not withstand legal scrutiny.
The 15th U-turn since Keir Starmer became prime minister has come about following months of criticism. The government’s stated rationale for the delays had always been procedural — it is pushing through major reforms for some areas, including abolishing and merging various authorities that are currently under the control of county councils, and these redrawn authorities would instead have the option of waiting until the reorganisation was complete in 2027 to hold elections.
Reed had insisted just last month that it was not “denying democracy” but rather “speeding up elections to the new councils”. But the Electoral Commission had already raised concerns, alongside which was the matter of a 152,000-signature petition and growing unease within its own ranks. Now, it seems, lawyers have sided with those many naysayers.
The political damage to the government goes well beyond the legal embarrassment.
“It is a total own-goal,” one Labour MP told me. “Did we not check legal advice to see what would happen if anyone challenged it?”
The optics of the original decision were already difficult: a Labour Party trailing in the polls seeking to delay elections. Ministers insisted the timing was coincidental but the government’s opponents insisted Labour was simply trying to postpone damaging local losses.
Zia Yusuf, a senior figure within Reform UK, was in no mood to be diplomatic when I spoke to him this week for ITV News. “It really is throwing in the towel and waving the white flag,” he said. “What this shows is that there was never really any chance this was going to stand up in court. I think Keir Starmer and his government just thought they could railroad this through and nobody would do anything about it.”
To make it worse, Reform sources told me that the party’s legal fees — which the government has agreed to pay — were in excess of £100,000. Ultimately, this means the taxpayer foots a six-figure legal bill, a detail that hasn’t gone down particularly well with some Labour MPs.
“Delaying elections we might do badly in was a bad headline to begin with. U-turning because Reform challenged it in the courts is even worse but now [the fact] that we’ve had to pay for it all is not good at all,” another Labour MP told me.
And now, with this all done and dusted, focus will turn to these last-minute local elections themselves. The scale of what potentially awaits Labour on 7 May is sobering for the party: a JL Partners poll suggests the party could lose half the additional seats it is now defending, with the Telegraph claiming Labour could lose control of Blackburn with Darwen, Cannock Chase, Exeter, Preston, Thurrock and Worthing councils. Reform, unsurprisingly, is expected to make major gains.
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The now compressed timetable creates its own chaos. Councils and returning officers have less than three months to book polling stations, recruit and train staff and print ballot papers for elections they had been told previously would not happen. Labour councillors who did not think they had an election coming will undoubtedly feel like the rug has been pulled from underneath them. Expect any who lose their seats after thinking they were not even running to be very angry with central government and the prime minister.
May’s polls will be the biggest local government test in years. Farage is entering the campaign in the most favourable position his party has ever enjoyed, armed with a court victory, a cheque for his legal costs and a narrative that Starmer had to be stopped by the courts from denying millions of people their vote.
Whether or not that framing is fair, it is one that is likely to feature on the doorstep and in politics, perception is often everything.
Shehab Khan is an award-winning presenter and political correspondent for ITV News.
