Senior figures in Labour are facing mounting pressure to explain whether council leaders were urged behind the scenes to cancel local elections, after claims aired at a meeting of the party’s ruling body were made public by a veteran member.
The allegation, first reported by The Telegraph, emerged from Labour’s National Executive Committee meeting earlier this month and was detailed in a blog post by Ann Black, who has served on the NEC as a constituency representative since 2000 and chaired it between 2009 and 2010.
Keir Starmer insists that recent decisions to postpone May 7 local elections were not politically motivated, despite warnings that Labour could suffer heavy losses to Reform UK. Ministers say councils were given latitude because of a national reorganisation programme that will merge some authorities in the name of efficiency.
Nevertheless, the row has intensified calls for transparency, with critics demanding ministers “come clean” about whether political pressure was applied to local leaders.
More than 4.5 million people are set to be denied a vote after Steve Reed, the Local Government Secretary, scrapped elections for 29 councils last week, including 15 run by Labour. The Telegraph’s Campaign for Democracy is now urging Parliament to remove the Government’s legal power to cancel local elections, which is contained in a little known clause of the Local Government Act 2000.
In her blog, titled “Ann Black on the record”, Ms Black wrote that she had relayed concerns raised at the Jan 20 meeting by council leaders who, she said, had been encouraged to abandon elections and then pressured privately.
She wrote: “[I] passed on concerns from council leaders who were asked to choose whether to hold elections and then leant on behind the scenes.
“Where there is no overall control, opponents can complain loudly and freely about denial of democracy, and one Labour leader, in Nuneaton and Bedworth, has already lost a vote of no confidence.”
In Nuneaton and Bedworth, Conservative, Green and Liberal Democrat councillors combined last week to remove Labour leader Chris Watkins after he had sought a delay to the vote.
Ms Black also reported comments made by Mr Reed at the NEC meeting, quoting him as saying: “These decisions should not be imposed from above, and local leaders know best if they can deliver huge and complex organisational changes and also run elections.”
She added that he told colleagues party structures no longer reflected devolved arrangements and that the NEC should consider changing its rules to improve accountability.
Opposition politicians seized on the claims. Sir James Cleverly, the shadow housing, communities and local government secretary, said: “Steve Reed must come clean about whether the Labour Government pressured councils into asking for their local elections to be cancelled.
“Bullying councils over an issue of this magnitude would represent a serious breach of the rules and could even be unlawful.
“Labour is denying democracy and running scared of voters, to serve their own political interests. Throughout their top down reorganisation process, they have held a gun to local leaders’ heads, and then sought to blame them when facing a backlash from the millions of people denied a vote.
“The Conservatives are clear that these elections should be going ahead, and Labour must immediately tell the public if they have broken the law to stop them doing so.”
Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley and Middleton South, also criticised the postponements, saying: “I think the cancellations themselves are appalling. It wouldn’t surprise me if pressure had been put on serious members of the party in local government, and if so, it is to be regretted.”
He added that a number of Labour MPs were privately frustrated, saying: “On the [cancellation of] elections as well as other things, there is a great deal of unhappiness with the direction of the Government.”
Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, said: “Ann Black is a senior and well respected voice inside the Labour Party. Her revelation must be taken seriously and must be urgently investigated. The cat’s out of the bag, and it’s finally time for Labour to come clean.”
Polling conducted for The Telegraph suggested Labour majorities on 10 councils would disappear if elections went ahead as planned. Separate YouGov research carried out on Jan 25 and Jan 26 put Labour on 21 per cent nationally, four points behind Reform UK, ahead of the Conservatives on 17 per cent and the Greens on 16 per cent.
Senior Labour MPs have also raised concerns in the Commons. Florence Eshalomi, chair of the housing, communities and local government select committee, criticised Mr Reed for having assured her panel last November that elections would proceed.
At the time, he told MPs: “Elections are going ahead. In all the areas where they were told they will be going ahead.”
The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government strongly rejected suggestions of political interference. A spokesman said: “That is categorically untrue. We took a locally led approach and listened to councils who are best placed to judge postponements in their areas.
“We wrote to councils to see clarity and did everything we could to ensure councils felt supported to make the right decision.”
However, the prominence of Ms Black, who announced last week that she will step down from the NEC in September, has added weight to the controversy. Figures across Labour paid tribute to her record, with a spokesman for the soft Left Mainstream group calling her a “revered figure” and Rupa Huq, the MP for Ealing Central and Acton, describing her as “genuinely principled and fair minded”.
As scrutiny intensifies, The Telegraph’s Campaign for Democracy continues to press for legislative change, arguing that the extraordinary step of cancelling elections should no longer sit with ministers alone.
