There’s argument this row is political smokescreen, make fuss of postponements to obscure more important issues voters are upset about. Let’s explore what’s really going on.

What bothers voters even more than postponements? I argue it’s cuts to their services at same time as their council tax’s getting hiked. Councils of every colour are doing exactly this – cutting services whilst hiking taxes. In the old days local authority elections were based on: we will give you decent services you need, but cheaper than “they” will do it. I think we can agree – cutting services whilst hiking council taxes belongs to every party in local government right now, even Reform. Is it not true Reform voters attracted by a DOGE policy, instead Reform councils cut services whilst hiking taxes? So I claim the smokescreen of focussing on postponements to hide the truth. It’s more DODGE, than DOGE.

The truth is exactly what voters need to hear. Why are service’s scrapped and Council Taxes hiked, regardless who I vote in? What is the actual problem going on? And in this democracy, who is being honest and upfront about all council finances hogtied and heading to bankruptcy – and offering us solutions for it?

We can trust the actual local authority reform itself, any downsides have been mitigated because the Conservative Party created it when in power, not Starmer and Labour. Top Tories Robert Jenrick and Michael Gove were key drivers, as well as many Conservative councils architects of the plan. One in three people in England live in area covered by two local authorities — two chief executives, two sets of councillors, two finance directors – this reform slashes the number of councillors by 5,000 gets rid of highly-paid senior roles too. And postponing council elections on eve of streamlining is nothing new – between 2019 and 2022, Conservative government postponed local council elections to focus on implementing the local government reorganisations there.

Maybe the strongest example how to postpone elections to implement change is from 1980’s, when Conservative government went even further towards focus on saving money and delivering change faster, bringing in officials not even elected, in place of those who had been, to manage drawdown of those councils and focus on implementing the new bodies.

For 2026, 29 councils apparently provided sufficient evidence how postponement would release capacity to help deliver local government reorganisation, but remaining 34 councils also going through reorganisation will still hold local elections in May. This stinks of conflict of interest to me. This is where we need more grown up coverage from the media, and from out the political parties themselves. Why is reorganisation change taking so long? What is delay costing us? Is it lack of capacity? So how come 29 councils going through change can release capacity to deliver change, the other 34 cannot?

Whilst we ask the question, why is it so slow and wasting us money, is Lady Thatchers government approach the stronger answer, freeing up capacity and delivering organisational change quicker?

Let’s be flipping honest, there are no “po faced” arguments here, that “Elections are the key pillar of our representative democracy and should not be dismissed as a bureaucratic inconvenience, blah blah, whilst extending existing mandates affects legitimacy of local decision-making, damaging public confidence blah blah” that can possibly stand up against that this is literally electing to something in drawdown, gone in matter of months – and priority here is money for services voters depend on – so change implemented asap, not further delays.

Have Labour been cowardly to leave it up to the councils themselves to come forward? Should Labour be brave enough to copy Lady Thatchers Conservative blueprint – where all 63 council elections impacted by change – postpone their elections, do away with the councillors as well, spend small portion of all money saved by this on contractors, to focus on delivering drawdowns and delivering the change on time – the rest of the liberated money into protecting services, and to lower council taxes. Under Labour’s half hearted approach here – cowardly in face of accusations they’re cancelling democracy – delivery comes maybe 2027, maybe 2028, maybe more delay. This is it not good enough. Another example how Labour in power always takes so long to deliver change, wasting everyone’s time and money as it does so.

MoonRabbit.