[Tubby Isaacs]

Government abandons plans to delay 30 local council elections in May

£63m extra costs for this. For a load of areas about to be scrapped anyway. Seemed perfectly reasonable to me, seeing it's what happened with the GLC back in the day.

Coming next from Ed Davey and Nigel Farage- why isn't the government spending more money on <insert issue>?

[Tubby Isaacs]

I know parties are going to have a pop, but FFS.

They haven't "scrapped jury trials", you dishonest moron.

"Caretaker Prime Minister". This is Kipper bollocks.

Zack Polanski welcomes news 30 local elections now going ahead, saying cancelling them was part of 'disturbing authoritarian trend'
The Green party leader, Zack Polanski, has welcomed the news that local elections are going ahead in the 30 areas where they were going to be postponed. He says:

I am pleased the Government has done another u turn.
Attempting to cancel elections, on top of scrapping jury trials, mandatory ID cards, criminalising peaceful protest and harassment of journalists is part of a disturbing authoritarian trend of this caretaker Prime Minister.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

U-turn?
Isn't it the case that some interested parties requested that the elections be delayed, the government has decided not to?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Yeah, I think councils put in the request. Arguably out of electoral self interest, arguably because they think that £2m (on average) for their area could be better spent.

It's a U-turn, and it's better not to do those, but the reorganizations are mostly sensible. Why are there 11 district councils in Surrey alone? Doubtless the government would have got an easier time if it just let that absurdly expensive situation continue. Doubtless every teething problem will get ample coverage as well. All bias against this government in particular being able to do anything.

[Tubby Isaacs]

From Sam Freedman, who co-writes the Comment is Freed Substack

OK so on the one hand this is good for democracy but on the other means I have do loads more work for my local elections predictions post.
Yet another example of this government pointlessly using up political capital for something they had to u-turn on anyway. A real speciality.

He's one of the better commentators, but "uses up political capital" is unimportant compared to whether the big change (rationalizing local government) will go ahead. It will, and so will these (in my view pointless) elections.

The way people carry on it's like this, the WFA or whatever are epoch-making errors, like Brexit and Osborne-Davey cuts. Or indeed leaving NATO and scrapping nuclear power, as another gentleman wants us to do. They may be political errors, but that's not the same thing. Aren't these commentators supposed to want good policy above all?

[The Weeping Angel]

Meanwhile, here's some "cutting-edge" satire.

[kreuzberger]

The BBC are - no sheeet! - pitching this exasperatedly as "another U-turn". (Lead item was that tractor production in Volgograd has grown five-fold in the last quarter.)

[Tubby Isaacs]

U-turn enforced by the likely result of a court case. One man's U-turn is another man's "government overruled by activist judges".

[Tubby Isaacs]

Interesting article by the Institute of Government on the Civil Service. They're critical of Starmer but reckon that both Wormald and Simon Case weren't up to it.

https://www.instituteforgovernment.org. ... d-mistakes

Chris Wormald did little to change the way the civil service works during his short stint as cabinet secretary. Keir Starmer needs to appoint a leader who can restore the civil service’s confidence and drive out the passivity that has become too prevalent, write Alex Thomas and Hannah Keenan

[Abernathy]

Postponing elections in some local authorities that are imminently undergoing a radical re-organisation is a totally sensible, pragmatic thing to do that was, I think, actually welcomed by most or all of the local authorities concerned.

But it was a tailor-made issue for Farage and his Reform bandwagon - something (else) to tell lies about, and to whip up relentlessly into a full-blown grievance. Right up the frog-featured cunt’s street. And now Farage is (of course) proclaiming “victory for Reform”.

Deciding not to postpone some elections after all on the basis of solid legal advice is also a pragmatic and sensible thing to do in the circumstances. But it’ll waste a fucking big chunk of public money, and is of course, “another U-turn”.

What you gonna do ?

[Tubby Isaacs]

Tailor made for Ed Davey as well, who loves this stuff because it makes him sound like a radical reformer while not raising taxes. Of course, the radical reforms in terms of unitarisation are going ahead.

But clearly, they could have got the legal advice a bit earlier. It's not very good.

[Youngian]

Postponing elections in some local authorities that are imminently undergoing a radical re-organisation is a totally sensible, pragmatic thing to do that was, I think, actually welcomed by most or all of the local authorities concerned.

But it was a tailor-made issue for Farage and his Reform bandwagon - something (else) to tell lies about, and to whip up relentlessly into a full-blown grievance. Right up the frog-featured cunt’s street. And now Farage is (of course) proclaiming “victory for Reform”.

Deciding not to postpone some elections after all on the basis of solid legal advice is also a pragmatic and sensible thing to do in the circumstances. But it’ll waste a fucking big chunk of public money, and is of course, “another U-turn”.

What you gonna do ?

Spot traps before you fall into them. The Prince has to be a fox as well as a lion to stay in power.

[Boiler]

U-turn enforced by the likely result of a court case. One man's U-turn is another man's "government overruled by activist judges".

Government abandons plans to delay 30 council elections

From that BBC article:

The government has abandoned plans to delay 30 council elections in England, following advice this could be unlawful.

Local Government Secretary Steve Reed had approved delays for the ballots until 2027, arguing some councils were worried about the cost of running elections for authorities which are due to be abolished in a major reorganisation of local government.

Reform UK had launched a legal challenge against the plans to delay May's elections, which was due to be heard in the High Court on Thursday.

The move was welcomed by opposition parties, who had branded the delays undemocratic.

Reform leader Nigel Farage, writing on X, external, said: "We took this Labour government to court and won.

The government has agreed to pay Reform's legal costs relating to the proceedings, which a party source said would be at least £100,000.

Liberal Democrat leader Sir Ed Davey said his party "fought tooth and nail to stop this stitch-up and the government has been forced into a humiliating U-turn".

BTW, the only mentions of a "U-turn" in said article are quotes from Davey and, you guessed it - Polanski.

Where it does get labelled as a U-turn is in a Guardian headline, surprise surprise - to wit

Starmer abandons plans to delay local elections in England in latest U-turn

[Oboogie]

Tailor made for Ed Davey as well, who loves this stuff because it makes him sound like a radical reformer while not raising taxes.

Not as clear cut as Davey might like.

[Boiler]

Peterborough did the same due to a pending re-organisation of local government too.

[Abernathy]

Postponing elections in some local authorities that are imminently undergoing a radical re-organisation is a totally sensible, pragmatic thing to do that was, I think, actually welcomed by most or all of the local authorities concerned.

But it was a tailor-made issue for Farage and his Reform bandwagon - something (else) to tell lies about, and to whip up relentlessly into a full-blown grievance. Right up the frog-featured cunt’s street. And now Farage is (of course) proclaiming “victory for Reform”.

Deciding not to postpone some elections after all on the basis of solid legal advice is also a pragmatic and sensible thing to do in the circumstances. But it’ll waste a fucking big chunk of public money, and is of course, “another U-turn”.

What you gonna do ?

Spot traps before you fall into them. The Prince has to be a fox as well as a lion to stay in power.

Well, yes, but the point is that postponing (N.B. NOT “cancelling”) some local elections that would have been essentially pointless and would otherwise cost 63 million quid would have been widely regarded as uncontroversial until Farge and his cunts seized on it and turned it into a massive populist grievance - almost exactly what they did with the UK’s EU membership . I think there was even precedent.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Interesting article here.

Based on the most recent edition of the UK-EU Divergence Tracker, Joël Reland argues that, despite rhetoric about aligning more closely with the EU, Labour has in fact diverged more strongly from EU rules than previous Conservative governments.

https://ukandeu.ac.uk/labour-burnishes- ... edentials/

That's quite a striking conclusion, but what it actually means is that the Tories had loads of areas of divergence that they were starting on but never did anything. The Government is actually aligning on goods (which go disproportionately to the EU) and diverging on services (which go more to the rest of the world).

The points system looks fairly dubious. The deviation on finance looks massive, but the author points out that these changes don't actually amount to all that much. We'll have to see how far the EU goes on tech.

It mentions a certain Kemi Badenoch, who is constantly in the news attacking U-turns. As it says, she was going to let all EU regulations expire.... until she didn't. That's a rather bigger U-turn than some of the things she's been going on about.

[The Weeping Angel]

Funny that.

Of course, this all plays into a narrative of government U-turns that is being weaponised against the government. They keep doing these bad policies, which are bad, and then they u-turn which is also bad.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Fair point on the politics.

But the fact remains our side was about to do something but then was told it would lose in court. So it's not very good.

[Youngian]

Does the government have some neoliberal faith that US tech and finance are independent actors from the Washington administration? Starmer’s Munich speech didn't make much sense in painting the geopolitical landscape. More like a corporate holding position, 'Europe's great, America's great.' Well America' s not great, its not 1998 and Clinton isn't the POTUS, Keir. Deregulating and realigning to deepen ties with US tech and finance is delusional. Buck your ideas up.