TYRANT. Despot. Dictator.
Those are just some of the words used about Sir Keir Starmer after he postponed four mayoral elections due to be held next year.
It’s not every day the Prime Minister of one of the world’s oldest democracies is compared to autocrats like Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un, and Starmer might be forgiven for thinking everyone is over- reacting just a teeny-tiny bit.
After all, these are just four mayoral elections in some parts of the country in which, let’s be honest, most people probably won’t even bother to vote anyway.
But he’d be wrong. And here’s why: Elections matter. Not just general elections. The smaller local ballots matter, too.
You can’t have a democracy if you don’t have elections. Without the right to vote, there is no representation for the people and no accountability for the rulers.
More from Julia Hartley-Brewer
Not content with stealing our right to free speech and taking away our fundamental right to a jury trial, this Government is now planning to deprive millions of people of the right to vote in local elections for two long years.
Utter contempt
So, is it any wonder that Sir Keir Starmer has managed to achieve the impossible and unite the Tories, Reform UK, the Liberal Democrats and the Greens in condemning his latest attack on our basic rights?
But this decision betrays something more than the Prime Minister’s disregard for democracy. It has laid bare something far, far worse: His utter contempt for ordinary voters.
What other possible explanation could there be for the announcement yesterday that the mayoral elections, due in May 2026 in four new combined authorities, are to be cancelled and postponed for TWO YEARS?
The authorities affected are Essex; Hampshire and the Solent; Sussex and Brighton; and Norfolk and Suffolk.
But this comes after local elections due to be held in the very same places in May this year were cancelled until next year because the Government argued there was no point electing councillors for authorities that were about to be scrapped.
Now they claim the re-organisation of local government to create the new combined authorities is taking longer than expected so they must be delayed again, but this time for two years.
That means more than seven million voters across a whole swathe of the south- east of England will face a three-year wait for a chance to elect their local representatives.
Are we really expected to believe that a bit of bureaucratic shifting of the deckchairs can hold up local elections for that long?
At the end of World War Two in 1945, Britain was able to hold a general election across the entire country, just two months after VE Day.
Seriously, how stupid do they think we are?
No wonder Reform UK branded Starmer a “despot” and a “tyrant”, while the Tories’ James Cleverly accused Labour of a “scandalous attempt to subvert democracy”, and even the Green leader Zack Polanski called the decision “wild”.
He thinks we’re far too stupid, ignorant, uneducated and bigoted to make the right decisions.
Julia Hartley-Brewer
There’s no doubt that the PM is running scared from fighting Nigel Farage at next May’s local elections across England, with current polls pointing to Reform UK winning even more council seats and mayoralties than they did in this year’s local elections.
Labour also faces threats from the Lib Dems and the Greens on the Left, as well as a trouncing in the Holyrood elections in Scotland and the Senedd elections in Wales on the same day.
All of which could result in a leadership challenge to Sir Keir Starmer and the Prime Minister being forced out of No10.
The long delay to these mayoral elections tells us a lot about how worried No10 is about those votes.
But it also reveals just how little the PM thinks of the people of this country.
He doesn’t respect us, he doesn’t trust us and he certainly doesn’t think we should be allowed to have too much say in how our country is run.
He thinks we’re far too stupid, ignorant, uneducated and bigoted to make the right decisions.
We’re too gullible to the outlandlish claims of populist leaders like Nigel Farage to be trusted to use our vote wisely.
We’re too stupid to be trusted to vote in referendums after getting it so horribly wrong in 2016.
Don’t forget, Sir Keir Starmer is the man who, as Shadow Brexit Secretary, spent three years trying to undermine the largest democratic vote this country has ever seen, telling us that the 52 per cent who voted for Brexit didn’t understand what they were voting for and had to vote again.
And we definitely can’t be trusted to sit in judgment on our fellow citizens, which explains why Labour were happy to throw away 800 years of jury trials at the drop of a hat.
Ordinary people
Of course we can’t be depended on to make vital decisions about how our country is governed.
That’s why Sir Keir Starmer would much rather put his faith in Brussels bureaucrats in the EU and judges sitting in foreign courts to decide on our laws and how to control our borders.
It’s why Labour is fully signed up to international bodies like the United Nations, the World Health Organisation and the COP eco-summits, which ride roughshod over the rights and wishes of ordinary people.
And it’s why Starmer and his Cabinet are devotees of the BBC, the Office for Budget Responsibility, the public health agencies, Ofcom and every other quango filled with people Just Like Them.
Why? Because they honestly believe that if only the unelected, unaccountable, technocratic, lanyard-wearing classes were left to make all the decisions, then everything would work so much better.
Sir Keir Starmer may well be shocked at the reaction to his decision to postpone local mayoral elections.
But if the Prime Minister doesn’t like being branded a tyrant, a despot and a dictator, he should stop acting like one.
