Labour Called Zombie Government After Starmer’s 14th U Turn

The government is facing fresh backlash after U-turning on their plans to postpone elections for 30 local authorities.

Labour originally offered 63 councils the chance to delay their May local elections amid wider plans to re-organise local governments.

Ministers said 30 agreed to delay, pointing to the cost of holding elections during the council rejig.

But critics claimed the government’s move was motivated by a fear of losing those local elections, which Labour denied.

However, local government secretary Steve Reed has now decided to “withdraw his decision” to postpone the elections “in the light of legal advice”.

The reverse-ferret came as Reform UK prepared to take the government to court, so Nigel Farage is heralding it as a victory.

The government is now looking to “agree an order” with Reform to end the case and has promised to “pay the claimant’s costs of these proceedings’.

A total of 136 local authority areas across England will now hold elections in the spring – along with elections to the Welsh Senedd and the Scottish Parliament.

The government will be offering £63 million in new funding to help with the reorganising.

A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, said: “Following legal advice, the government has withdrawn its original decision to postpone 30 local elections in May.

“Providing certainty to councils about their local elections is now the most crucial thing and all local elections will now go ahead in May 2026.”

Farage told Sky News that the U-turn was “extraordinary”, claiming: “We were due [in court] this Thursday. They’ve caved, they’ve collapsed. It’s a victory for Reform.

“But more importantly, it’s a victory for democracy in this country.”

The MP for Clacton then called Reed’s future in the government into question.

He said: “What I do think now is the minister, Steve Reed, has clearly acted illegally. And given that the government has now given in, knew they’d lose to us in court, I think Steve Reed’s question as a minister should now be debated.”

Meanwhile, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said: “This is a zombie government. U-turn, after U-turn, after U-turn.

“No plan or programme to deliver anything. Even the simple stuff that should be business as usual gets messed up.

“And we’ve got three more years of this, because Labour MPs don’t want an early election – they know they will lose their seats.”

She also claimed Reed has “very serious questions to answer on whether political considerations were behind his decision”.

“He must come clean or we will use every means at our disposal to get to the truth,” she said.

Lib Dem leader Ed Davey said: “The Liberal Democrats have fought tooth and nail to stop this stitch-up and the government has been forced into a humiliating U-turn.

“Labour are terrified of Reform and we are the only party willing to stand up to Farage and beat him, as we do week after week in council by-elections.”

He also called on Starmer to support his party’s plans to stop governments from being allowed to “cancel elections on a whim ever again”.

Labour MP Florence Eshalomi – Chair of the Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee – said: “I welcome this development.

“As I argued previously, democracy is not an inefficiency that should be cut out during local government reorganisation process.”

She added: “Councils should not have been put in the position of choosing between frontline services or elections.

“I welcome the indication that the government will provide additional resources to ensure that local council elections can take place and look forward to seeing more detail on this.”

Councilor Richard Wright, Chair of the District Councils’ Network, said: “Council officers, councillors and local electorates will be bewildered by the unrelenting changes to the electoral timetable.

“Councils were assured by the government that elections could be legally cancelled but now it seems ministers have come to the opposite conclusion.

“It’s the government, not councils that have acted in good faith, which should bear responsibility for this mess which impacts on people’s faith in our cherished local democracy.”

He added: “We need to have faith in the government’s decision-making as we work on the biggest shake-up of councils in 50 years – but the government is doing little assure us that it has a strong grasp of the huge legal complexity involved.”