In other news, Peterborough’s modest request to postpone elections for 18 councillors has apparently triggered a full‑scale constitutional crisis. At least, that is the impression you would get from John Howard and the local Conservative Party, who now speak as if the very act of rescheduling a polling day is the first step towards authoritarian rule.
A quick glance at recent history suggests something rather different.
Conservative ministers have postponed elections so often they could run a masterclass. Thirty‑three councils delayed elections during earlier reorganisations.
The Government postponed every local election in the country in 2020. Rishi Sunak, back when he was Minister for Local Government, put elections on hold in Buckinghamshire, Dorset and Northamptonshire because asking people to vote for councils about to be abolished would confuse voters and waste money.
Robert Jenrick delayed the elections in Cumbria, North Yorkshire and Somerset in 2021 because those councils were being abolished and replaced.
He argued that asking people to elect councillors to authorities that were about to disappear would confuse voters and saddle them with representatives serving only a few months before the new councils took over.
In each case, Conservative ministers were clear: elections matter, but so does basic practicality.
Do not ask the public to vote for councils with no long‑term future. Do not spend public money on elections that will be overtaken by structural change. Do not confuse voters for the sake of sticking to a date in the diary.
Fast‑forward to Peterborough, where the council is simply asking for a short delay for 18 seats because of capacity and cost pressures. Suddenly, postponement is rebranded as “democracy denial”.
If this is democracy denial, then Sunak, Badenoch and Jenrick must have been running a franchise.
The truth is far less dramatic. Peterborough is following the same logic Conservative ministers have used repeatedly, on a far larger scale.
The only difference is that this time the request comes from a Labour‑led council, and so the principle has been replaced with performance.
In other news, consistency remains postponed until further notice.
