Labour minister admits local election U-turn is 'not ideal' as he swipes at Reform UK: 'Not taking lectures!'

After Reform UK launched a judicial review against the delay, Steve Reed penned a letter to council leaders confirming Labour was abandoning its plan.

Mr Reed wrote: "The Government can confirm that all local elections in May 2026 will now go ahead.

"I recognise that many of the local councils undergoing reorganisation voiced genuine concerns about the pressure they are under as we seek to deliver the most ambitious reforms of local government in a generation."

Quizzed by host Eamonn Holmes on whether the Government is "up to the fight" in the May elections, Mr Kinnock told GB News: "Absolutely, we're always up for the fight.

"We have, though, been trying to reform local government. We've got legislation which is all about streamlining it, making it more effective and efficient."

Citing the previous "legal advice" as the reason for postponing ballots, he explained: "There's a lot of people in the country who live in an area where there's two tiers of local Government.

"That means two chief executives to finance directors. It's not a good use of taxpayers money, and it's not the most efficient way of doing it. So we we want to change it.

"But when in going through that process, 30 of the local authorities said, look, we're going to really struggle to do the reorganisation and hold local elections at the same time.

"We listened, we said, okay, we will postpone your local elections so you can push through with the reorganisation.

"We did that on the basis of legal advice, which said, you're fine to go ahead on that basis."

Vowing to remain "committed" to the devolution plans in those council areas, Mr Kinnock said that they "accept the new legal advice".

He made clear: "The legal advice has now changed and we're having to change our position, so the elections will go ahead, but we remain absolutely committed to the reforms, to the streamlining, to removing that duplication.

"So two or three years down the line, people are really going to see the benefits of these changes."

Pushing back on Mr Kinnock's remarks, Ellie told the Labour minister: "This change hasn't come about from this principled change of heart, but it's been because Reform UK have threatened court action?

"It looks as though the Labour Government has literally said, 'well, it's not going to stand up in court'?"

He responded: "I'm certainly not going to take any lectures from Reform on democracy - who voted for Nigel Farage to be the leader of Reform? He's never been elected to that position.

"We've also had people like Nathan Gill taking tens of thousands of pounds off Moscow to peddle Kremlin propaganda in the European Parliament, so no lectures on democracy from them."

Mr Kinnock reiterated: "We've sought to push through a reform which would be good for the taxpayer and in the national interest.

"The legal advice has changed and as a Government that's absolutely committed to the rule of law, we're having to change our position.

"But we remain absolutely focused on getting these reforms done so that we can streamline local Government and make it more effective, deliver those public services that people want and need on their doorsteps."

Grilling Mr Kinnock further, Eamonn pressed the Labour MP: "Would you accept though that it's not a good look for you? The Government has blundered on this.

"The Government was deliberately trying to avoid the elections to avoid massive defeats in the elections, and this is the way it's turned out?"

Mr Kinnock admitted: "I'm not going to stand here and pretend that it's ideal. We had a reform programme, we had legal advice which said we can take that reform programme through rather than have local elections in May 2026 and have a kind of zombie council and then have to have local elections again in May 2027.

"That's incredibly costly and it's inefficient, and it's not really particularly good for democracy to be having a zombie council elected for a year without any real significance in terms of its ability to deliver for local people.

"But we are where we are, we accept that the legal advice has changed, and we have provided £63million to those local councils."