A High Court judge has ruled that Reform UK can challenge Labour’s decision to scrap elections for millions of Britons
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 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”. According to polling experts, Reform UK would have wiped out the Labour Party if the votes went ahead.
“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.”
A spokesman for the Department for Local Government insisted: “Some initial reporting on this highly charged issue has been entirely wrong and misleading.
“Today the court gave a date on which it would consider this challenge. Nothing more than that. An injunction was applied for, but was not granted so there is no block in place.”