“Let the people vote,” says Nigel Farage as a national newspaper reports county leaders have specifically cited the risk that his Reform UK party could win the English council elections in their arguments to cancel them.
Elections in seven English county councils, already postponed one year, may be postponed again. Brexit pioneer and Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage has launched a campaign against any further denial of a chance to vote to millions of Britons, while pointing out those councils who shout loudest about the need to postpone elections are those where sitting councillors are most likely to lose their seats to his surging populist party.
Elections in seven councils, covering over five million voters in Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Surrey, East and West Sussex, and Hampshire, were postponed until 2026, as the government pushed to transform the structure of local government. Councils would become larger and have more powerful directly elected mayors, but this process is taking years and it was argued to the central government that having elections during this process would be wasteful.
Now, The Times claims to have seen submissions from several councils “lobbying hard” for elections to be denied yet again, and incredibly Council leaders are directly referencing the possibility that Nigel Farage’s party could win the votes as a justification to cancel the ballots. One unnamed Council leader is reported to have argued that Reform would “probably” win, which would “frustrate progress” with the local government restructuring.
Another Council leader said: “We are lobbying hard for their elections to be delayed because we are confident we will get Reform mayors next year.” That leader said allowing Reform to win the elections would “create instability” which could stand in the way of “what needs to be achieved”.
A third made a similar argument, saying the present leadership — very likely Conservative — is “competent experienced” and giving the people their say to replace them should be stopped.
Predictably, even though the Labour Party government of the United Kingdom sees the Conservatives who lead these councils as their political opponents, both perhaps have a greater interest in seeing down Farage, who is a threat to the status-quo, and thus, the government is reported to be carefully considering the requests. The Times states that a government source — again, unnamed — said they were open to the idea because “democracies are in crisis around the world”, a tacit admission that to their minds, democracy can be saved by cancelling elections.
Remarkably, it was also stated there is a growing school of thought within Labour who think pressing ahead with the plan to create new, directly-elected mayors with new powers should be reconsidered given the chance they’ll be won by Reform UK candidates.
Reform leader Farage responded to this alleged plot by declaring, simply, “The establishment are planning to cancel local elections again. Let the people vote.”
Making reference again to the allegedly politically-motivated nature of the requests to cancel the 2026 elections, Mr Farage said as he launched a petition to lobby the government: “Coincidentally, they were all areas it was thought Reform would win.”
“Well, can you believe it? The Tory leaders of these councils have written to the government asking for them to be postponed yet again. And in two cases, Tory council leaders openly said they want the elections to be cancelled because they fear Reform will win.”
This is a “complete, total outrage”, Mr Farage said, noting five-year terms would be stretched to up to seven years without an election if the plan went ahead. “Let’s object to democracy being delayed yet again”, he said, remarking: “We are launching this petition because we intend to lobby government as hard as possible to say why on earth should people pay their council tax if they don’t get the chance to vote for people who implement policies that effect their lives locally”.
The language is very mild for Mr Farage, who reacted with considerable anger when the elections were cancelled for the first time around by the government last year when he called the move dictatorial collusion and “sheer cowardice”. He said in 2024: “That’s how we do things. We have elections… we judge those we voted for, whether they’ve done well or badly, and we have the ability to remove them… We think it is completely outrageous, in fact despite the fact we are a very happy, optimistic, forward-looking party we are blimmin’ angry”.
Meanwhile, pollsters continue to assess Farage’s Reform as the most popular party in the UK, and often by a considerable margin. Analysis of actual votes in recent months — special elections to fill vacated council seats are a weekly occurrence — even suggests polls may not go far enough. The Daily Telegraph states of the 108 Council seats filled with special elections since Spring, that Labour is actually seriously underperforming compared to polling.
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