Labour is cancelling democracy in areas where Reform is set to surge
Keir Starmer’s Labour government has started 2026 in a truly awful state. In the polls, it has just slumped to a truly abysmal approval rate of 11 per cent — a record low.
It has fallen to third place, behind Reform and even the Tories. And only six per cent of British people think it ‘very likely’ that Starmer will still be Prime Minister at the end of the year.
This is a governing party, in other words, that is collapsing in real time, which helps to explain what else we have just learned: Starmer’s Labour government is now preparing to postpone democracy in areas where Reform looks set to surge. That’s right.
According to an investigation by The Telegraph, Labour has already decided to delay elections this May in five areas that are forecast to swing to Reform, and is also considering doing so in a further seventeen areas.
Why? Because Starmer and his Labour colleagues can see what’s coming. In northern areas such as Hyndburn, Preston, and Blackburn, polling puts Reform well ahead of Labour and suggests an important new flank in Reform’s support is about to open up, entrenching the party across working-class Labour heartlands.
If a general election were held tomorrow, no less than ten members of the current Labour Cabinet —Yvette Cooper, Lisa Nandy, John Healey, Ed Miliband and Bridget Phillipson, among them — would lose their parliamentary seats to Reform.
But instead of facing voters, Starmer’s Labour is now moving the goalposts. The official explanation for postponing democracy is “local government reorganisation”. Local councils, we are told, need time to restructure and merge their administrations.
Yet, conveniently, this “reorganisation” allows local elections that are scheduled for May 2026 to be postponed by a full year, denying millions of voters a say. In fact, some estimate that around ten million people will be denied the vote.
Keir Starmer is running scared of Reform. This undemocratic stitch-up proves it - Matt Goodwin
|Getty Images
Just imagine, for a moment, if this were happening in, say, Donald Trump’s America, Viktor Orban’s Hungary, or under a Reform government in Westminster.
We would never hear the end of it from Starmer and his allies — the same Labour politicians wheeled out to defend the suppression of democracy would be livid. Words such as “authoritarian”, “dictator”, “extremist”, and “far-right” would dominate headlines.
We need to be honest about what this is about. Starmer and Labour are running scared — running scared of Farage, running scared of Reform and running scared of the people who, clearly, as we can see in the polls, have swung sharply against Labour.
Farage has suggested this is “banana republic behaviour” and I think he has a point. Democracy is not optional — it is not something you simply pause when the polls look bad. And the people are not an inconvenience, who can be quietly pushed aside to favour managerialism. They are the lifeblood of democratic nations.
Yet as we’ve seen with this authoritarian Labour Government, it has a very different view. Time and time again, Labour has moved to hoard power at the centre, weaken accountability to the people, restrict our democratic rights like free speech and free expression, and manage rather than serve democracy.
There is also a certain irony to this, watching Starmer and his allies talk endlessly about promoting democracy abroad while hollowing it out at home.
The blunt reality, I think, is that like most authoritarian progressives, Starmer and Labour MPs do not really trust the people, do not want to hear what they have to say, and view national democracy as a bit of an inconvenience.
But a government that fears elections has already lost its mandate. And a prime minister who postpones democracy and elections in this way is clearly not a confident one — he is afraid of the people, and everybody can see it.
This article first appeared on Matt Godwin’s Substack
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