Labour is Afraid of the People

Thoughts on the erosion of our democracy

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Here are two things that happened this week.

First, after Labour’s disastrous budget last week, Keir Starmer’s Labour government just crashed to 14% of the national vote —a record low.

Astonishingly, Labour are now trailing the Greens in the polls. Voters are running for the hills. The entire two-party system is imploding around us.

Second, we learn that the Labour government is postponing four mayoral elections —not by a few weeks or even a few months, but by two whole years.

Essex. Hampshire and the Solent. Sussex and Brighton. Norfolk and Suffolk. They will all have their elections pushed back to 2028.

Make no mistake. Both these things —Labour’s collapsing support and its decision to run away from voters—are connected.

Labour is panicking. It is now being squeezed on both sides, by Reform and the Greens, and has no answers. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves know they are only one set of bad election results away from facing an internal coup.

They have locked the British people into a low-growth, high tax, and high debt economy and now, like cowards, do not want to be confronted by the people at all.

And so, they are doing the only thing left-wing parties always do when they are in trouble —they are eroding democracy, they are trying to quieten the voice of the people, trying to “manage” rather than recognise public opinion.

On the surface, officials say they are cancelling these elections because they need more time for “devolution plans” and “local reorganisation”.

But this is nonsense.

Earlier this year, they cancelled elections at random, never properly explaining why some areas were having democracy chopped while others were not.

Isn’t it interesting that the proposed delay to these elections now also means they could take place under a new voting system that happens to be more favourable to left-wing parties —that will swap first-past-the-post for the supplementary vote system?

And isn’t it interesting, too, that the elections are being delayed in the very areas where support for the Labour government is crumbling fastest —in areas that are projected to swing behind Reform?

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Unsurprisingly, the Tories are calling the move an “affront to democracy”, while Reform says it is a “dictatorial cancelling of democracy.”

Even former Labour minister Jim McMahon has said Keir Starmer is now “squandering the trust” of the people —he has a point.

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Because what we are now witnessing in Britain is not just the delay of an important set of elections but a much broader assault on our national democracy.

Let me explain what I mean and then paint a bigger picture.

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