Can Starmer ever get it right first time in his U-turn administration?

At the election, Sir Keir Starmer promised change. It was the front page of his Labour Party’s manifesto. A massive photo of him with ‘Change’ emblazoned over it. He has proven good at one form of change; changing his mind.

On the radio yesterday morning Sir Keir Starmer was asked about the number of U-turns his government had made. At that time he had racked up 13. It is worth seeing the full scale written down to understand the real impact: Digital ID cards; Pub’s business rates; Farm tax; Income tax hike; NICS increase; Waspi women compensation; Winter Fuel payments; Benefits cuts; Two child benefit cap; Grooming gangs inquiry; Trans rights defenition; Day-one workers rights; Debt fiscal rules.

He boasted that the reason behind them is because “I am a pragmatist. I am a common-sense merchant”. Would he stick to his course, Starmer was asked: “Absolutely. I know exactly why I was elected in with a five-year mandate to change this country for the better, and that’s what I intend to do.” Rather hilariously when his interview was finished on BBC 2, they played a song by Duffy: ‘Mercy.’

Starmer will be begging for it because just an hour and forty minutes later, he had got to U-turn number 14 – and one of the biggest of them all. Showing he’s not just struggling to control the steering, he has fallen asleep at the wheel. The government threw in the towel under legal threat and restored plans for their cancelled local elections.

“Predictable chaos from a useless government that cannot make basic decisions,” posted Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader. “This is a zombie government. U-turn after U-turn after U-turn.”

After spending all the political capital and energy on Labour’s decision to cancel elections to around 30 councils in England and deny some 4.5 million people their vote in May, yet another U-turn took place, leaving local councils having to work against constrained timetables, political parties scrambling for candidates and more government spending wasted first on cancelling them and now hurriedly rescheduling them (the BBC reports £63m put aside to help councils with additional costs). Oh and that is not the end of the extent money has been wasted – the government is now having to pay the legal fees of their challenger: Reform UK.

So ahead of major local elections and an upcoming byelection in what should be Labour heartland, in Manchester’s Gorton and Denton, the Labour government have been forced to U-turn and pay out to one of their political rivals.

Reform’s legal appeal saw lawyers proposing to argue the Government was misusing powers under the Local Government Act 2000 never intended to allow for the postponement of elections, other than in exceptional circumstances. But if there were always legal problems as this lawsuit revealed, it needs to be explained how this got through government processes in the first place. That is something the Tories have already called on.

Shadow housing secretary James Cleverly, amidst calling for Steve Reed’s resignation, wrote to the Local Government Secretary: “What new factors were considered in the re-decision that led to a different conclusion being drawn? (In both cases, whilst the Government does not normally disclose its legal advice, there is a strong public interest for the rationale for the decision-making to be made clear).”

Reed had been defending his decision up until recently as Labour claimed that the looming reorganisation of local authorities would make elections expensive, complicated and unnecessary. But, in a letter published yesterday, he said that he was withdrawing his decision “in the light of recent legal advice”.

With thousands of lawyers at their disposal, we are somehow expected to believe none of them ever raised an issue to Reed’s department that would have prevented it from getting this far. It would have saved a lot of time and money had he sought their advice to begin with. Or, of course, perhaps there is a world where this was a political decision to hide the Labour government’s blushes amid poor results, no matter the legal position, and previous legal advice was ignored.

Polling had shown 10 Labour authorities would be wiped out if the elections were to go ahead.

As the shadow Attorney General questioned: “It’s hard to see what has changed as a matter of law.”

According to The Guardian, government sources say Reed was warned the delays could lead to a legal challenge, but that it only became clear once a review had been lodged by Nigel Farage that the government was likely to lose it. How embarrassing.

For how long Labour insisted it was a decision based on local choice, to succumb to a legal threat shows their claims of regard for local democracy were pure tosh. Labour MPs were right in telling Starmer, these U-turns (and often the policy positions in the first place) do make them look “really stupid”.