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Labour accused of ‘utter chaos’ as Starmer delays more elections

It’s widely expected that the local elections in 2026 will be another bloodbath for Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. As such, any attempt to delay elections will be seen as an attempt by Starmer to avoid embarrassment. This is precisely what’s happening now that the government is set to delay four mayoral elections.

While there is some complexity as to why the elections are being delayed, it’s a mess for Labour whichever way you look at it.

Dither and delay

As reported by the BBC, 18 councils requested a delay to local elections in January this year. This was because they were over taxed as a result of reorganising themselves into eight unitary authorities. As reported:

The new mayors are part of a simplification of local government, aimed at reducing the number of councils, by merging district and county authorities to create unitary authorities.

The unitary authorities will be headed up by new mayors, who will be handed more funding and extra powers to run their area, intended to hand greater power to local communities.

However, the body representing district councils warned at the time that the plans could spark “turmoil” and argued “mega-councils” could undermine local decision-making.

Now, the government says more time is needed to reorganise these councils before they vote for their new mayors. Given that Starmer’s ‘trustworthiness’ is at historic lows, people are understandably not taking him at his word:

Starmer trustworthiness YouGov polling

Green Party deputy leader Rachel Millward had this to say:

MAYORAL ELECTIONS DELAYED TIL 2028! Labour: incompetent, scared & zero regard for democracy. The devolution agenda they sprung on us a year ago is in utter chaos, they are terrified of their plummeting in the polls, and – most importantly – are completely failing to solve the real problems of local government.

Inequality rises, the housing crisis continues, our bills keep rising – the cost of living is staggering. But Labour just pour resource into chaos, rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic like real lives Mayors have serious powers to bring change. And Labour know they’d not be winning any of it.

But the Greens are rising. We’ve doubled membership in 2 months. We’re beating Labour in some polls. Thanks for the extra time. We’re coming.

Canary contributor Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu made a similar statement:

People are also linking the cancellation to Labour’s other anti-democratic moves:

As you’d expect, Nigel Farage is planning to maximise his political capital from this, with the media no doubt dropping everything once again to listen to him:

On the ropes

It’s important to remember that other local elections will still go ahead in 2026; that Labour will no doubt do catastrophically, and that his MPs will likely give him the boot as a result. Given that, it’s not impossible to believe Labour are delaying the mayoral elections for non-cynical reasons.

At the same time, there are very few people in the country who are willing to extend Starmer any charitability, and as such this will be another bruising for him.

The moral of the story is to not betray an entire country’s trust if you expect its citizens to ever vote for you again.

Featured image via Number 10 (Flickr) / David Williams (Wikimedia)

By Willem Moore

This post was originally published on Canary.