Cancellation cancelled

I was chopping firewood yesterday when my phone pinged. I checked the message and initially came to the conclusion that someone had sent me a spoof. Apparently, the government have now carried out U-turn no 15: the cancelled elections were no longer cancelled. And Reform were £100K better off, paid for by the taxpayer. I thought someone had sent me by mistake a copy of a very bad script for a very bad political soap opera. But on checking out the story on Sky News, it turns out that the story was real.

Quite how a government led by an experienced lawyer can get a government legal case so badly wrong is beyond me. But somehow Labour under Starmer have achieved the near impossible: reversed a major policy at the last moment, heaped an almighty mess on local councils who now have to organise a major set of local elections with only 2 months to go before nominations open and, to add insult to injury, the taxpayers are paying Reform's legal bills. The one bright spark in all of this is that electoral offices are used to having short notice for organising elections. General elections often come as a surprise yet still they manage to run everything needed to elect the local MP.

Those I feel most sorry for are the campaigners of all political parties on the ground who had been under the impression that they were not going to the polls this May.  Elections are like icebergs. You can see the tip of them but most are out of view below the waterline. Candidates need to be identified, interviewed and selected, agents need to be trained and appointed, literature needs to be written to include material about the elections, data need to be up-to-date, manifestos need to be written and approved, key messages need to be agreed. Here in Gateshead we have been working towards the May local elections for two years and fortunately our council was not one of those due to have elections cancelled. I know that Lib Dem HQ have been pressing for months all the areas facing cancelled elections to continue as if the elections were going to take place anyway. Hopefully, local Lib Dem parties have heeded this advice but it would be so easy for some of the preparations to slip.

The decision to go ahead with the elections benefits Reform. Judging by how they fought elections last year, they are likely to have a centralised campaign with lots of nationally produced target literature mailed out via the postal service. Whatever they deliver locally is also likely to be national literature. They have little or no input from their candidates on the ground. The biggest losers are likely to be Labour, followed by the Conservatives. Some areas are vulnerable to the Lib Dems who are likely to pick up more seats. This however does not excuse the mess left by Labour. 15 u-turns and counting.