A High Court judge has ruled that Reform UK can challenge Labour’s decision to scrap elections for millions of Britons
The news is a major boost for Reform (Image: Getty)
A High Court judge has ruled that Nigel Farage and Reform UK can press ahead with a major legal challenge objecting to Keir Starmer’s latest elections delay. The brutal news for the Prime Minister was confirmed this afternoon, when Mr Justice Chamberlain temporarily delayed the PM moving ahead with the delays until the legal challenge has been heard in the courts.
The legal showdown has now been scheduled for February 19 and 20, when Reform will issue formal objections to millions of Britons being denied a vote. 30 local councils have now accepted the government’s offer to delay this year’s elections, taking the vote from nearly four million Britons. Announcing the legal challenge last week, Mr Farage said the potential delay is “outrageous”.
Mr Farage blasted: “29 councils have now officially asked for local elections to be delayed. That’s 3.9m people across 591 council seats who will lose their right to vote in May.
“The establishment are terrified because they know Reform would win.”
Polls last week suggested Reform would storm to victory in the councils that have delayed their elections, coming first with 28.3% of the vote to the Tories‘ 20.7% and Labour’s 17.4%.
This morning top Labour minister Darren Jones insisted it would be too “costly” for the votes to go ahead, amid a major restructuring of local councils.
Mr Jones said: “We’re not frightened of democracy. Councils themselves were able to request a delay, a short delay, to their elections, if they’re going through a reorganisation. And a number of councils have asked for that.
“This isn’t the Government imposing it on councils. Councils have asked for it. And some MPs across the House, presumably in those local areas, may have different views to their councils.
“They’re perfectly entitled to represent their constituency view on that. But the key point here is that if a council is reorganising, you don’t want to go through a costly set of elections for a number of councillors and then have to redo it five minutes later because you’ve changed the boundaries of the council.”
A Reform UK spokesman said: “We said we would fight Labour every step of the way on this and we are. Labour are disgracefully trying to deny democracy. We are determined to win this case next month.”
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