A FURIOUS backlash erupted on Thursday against the Labour government’s cancellation of May’s local government elections, which could deprive 10 million citizens of the right to vote.
Sixty-three councils were due to have May 2026 elections, including the London commuter belt counties of Essex, Surrey, Hampshire and East and West Sussex, but 27 are now delayed by 12 months until 2nd May 2027, to allow for a reorganisation process, most of them for Labour-run councils.
Party leaders of the Tory, Reform and Liberal Democrats all condemned the election delays, while a petition for Parliament to prevent future cancellations has amassed 137,000 signatures, as of Thursday, against the attack on democracy, stressing that ‘since 1918, the right to vote is a sacred and inalienable right’, and warned against ‘voter suppression. The voice of the people must be heard,’ it declared.
The Conservatives, Reform UK and Liberal Democrats have all condemned the delays with Tory James Cleverly, the shadow communities secretary, lashing Labour of cowardice in Parliament. ‘This government has moved seamlessly from arrogance to incompetence and now cowardice,’ he told MPs.
Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey said: ‘The government’s plans could see 10 million people across England denied their voice in the local elections in May.’ But the government was showing no sign of giving ground. Surrey and Hampshire are likely to go ahead with voting in May, but some election cancellations have been confirmed or are expected in 27 areas, most of them in Labour-run councils.
The overhaul of local government will see the two-tier system of district and county councils in many parts of England replaced with new ‘unitary’ councils set up to deliver all local services in their area.
Dismissing the uproar, Local Government Secretary Steve Reed said: ‘Running a series of elections for short-lived zombie councils will be costly, time consuming and will take scarce resources away from front-line services like fixing pot holes and social care, while denying 4.5 million people a vote.’
The Conservative-led Essex council is also said to have privately discussed the possibility of a cancellation with ministers, which would deny a further 1.1 million people a vote.
The delays means that millions of people will have been left with no say over who controls their local services and council tax for up to seven years.
Ministers claim the delays are needed to merge local authorities as part of an efficiency drive, but critics have claimed that Labour is cancelling ballots to avoid losing hundreds of seats to Reform UK as it did in the last local elections. However, ministers have admitted that the new unitary councils are not expected to be up and running until 2028 at the earliest.
Two million voters across five Tory councils will be denied a vote this spring. However, the reality is that the state is centralising state power to destroy ‘democracy’ and to suppress dissent, and the imminent mass uprisings due to the collapse in living standards and the super-austerity that is being unleashed on the working class by Starmer’s Labour government.
In fact, it is the raging global financial crisis, now focussed on the USA, with its $38 trillion state debt, and on an AI bubble about to burst, that is forcing Starmer’s hand to offload the crisis of the bankrupt UK onto the British working class and to put down any revolt or mass strike action by the working class.
As part of this drive, plans to centralise control of English and Welsh police forces will be announced on Monday by Labour Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. She is to review the ‘bureaucratic police force model’ she believes diverts resources away from neighbourhood policing and ‘significantly cuts’ the number of forces from the current 43.
Ministers say the changes will improve crime fighting by saving money, avoiding duplication and allowing better use of technology.
But this is not about fighting crime, but about preparing for a police state with no democratic elections.
It is about universal surveillance with facial-recognition cameras and more ‘boots on the ground’ to intervene in protests and strikes and about mobilising police forces nationally to attack major strikes like the Great Miners’ Strike of 1984-85.
It is now time to recall the TUC to mobilise the trade unions in a general strike to defeat the attacks on democracy and the police state preparations, and bring down Starmer’s government, to defend the NHS and the Welfare State and set up a Workers’ Government to establish socialism in Britain. This is the only way to take society forward and not back to the utter misery and destitution of the 1930s. Forward to the British socialist revolution!