The failing Labour council leaders trying to put off an election

Basildon’s lead councillor has a string of controversies trailing behind him involving bullying claims, abandoned policies and alleged mishandling of funds. Unsurprisingly, the Essex-based council is also one of the key areas pushing to delay its May local elections, supposedly for reasons of stability and capacity. But one thing we have learnt by now is that politicians are rarely so altruistic.

Like Basildon, many of the councils asking for a postponement are the ones with lead councillors whose histories raise awkward questions or who don’t appear to have the experience or the ability to do an important job well. It’s why The Telegraph has launched a Campaign for Democracy – to stop councils requesting a postponement if they claim that a vote while restructuring is too expensive or too difficult to organise.

“There is a growing pattern of councils with the worst financial records and governance failures being the ones postponing elections,” says John O’Connell, chief executive of the TaxPayers’ Alliance. “Councils that have presided over scandals, ballooning debts or collapsing services are now seeking to delay the moment when voters get to pass judgment on their record. The law must be changed so elections can’t be cancelled.”

Labour Party member Gavin Callaghan was 28 years old when he was elected Basildon lead councillor in 2017 and, while he made history for his age, his time at the top has hardly been a triumph. Last year, he was urged by his own officers to consider social media training after he was accused of bullying fellow councillor Sam Journet, branding him “thick as mince” and mocking him as “sweaty Sam”. The row followed an extraordinary council meeting in which a female Labour councillor allegedly made an obscene hand gesture at Journet – one that Callaghan later dismissed as an exercise for carpal tunnel syndrome. Journet was later arrested in connection with (then later cleared of) harassment charges.

The controversies didn’t stop there. A different Basildon councillor under Callaghan was suspended last year over alleged racist tweets and support for Tommy Robinson, while a deeply unpopular plan to build 17,000 homes on green belt land has been languishing in public consultation for years. Similarly, a disastrous waste collection overhaul sparked fury among residents, cost more than £1m, and was eventually scrapped after leaving people “ashamed and in tears”. Basildon council was also fined £150,000 for publishing sensitive personal data about a traveller family in an online planning application, while another row erupted after the authority paid almost £10,000 to the husband of a councillor in order to enhance the quality and accessibility of its Facebook Live broadcasts.

The council says that the relationship was declared and all procurement rules were followed. But still, none of this sits easily with claims that Basildon simply needs to cancel this May’s local elections in order to focus on delivering local government reorganisation in Essex. It raises the question of whether Callaghan, who is also the managing director of Beartas – a public affairs, public policy and strategic communications agency – and who is paid £371 per council meeting attended, has the focus or the ability to continue at the job.

“If you give some members the chance not to face the electorate, especially if they think they will get a hammering, they will take it,” says Colin Copus, professor of local politics at De Montfort University. “The Government has given them a handy excuse but in situations like these, it is not the elections that should be postponed, it is the reorganisation.”

Peterborough offers an even starker example of this issue. The city council under former Labour leader Dennis Jones has been under sustained scrutiny for years, with a three-year government review of its finances uncovering a predicted £27m budget gap. The authority is now forecasting a £6.1m overspend, having already written off millions from a failed £23m loan scheme for rooftop solar panels.

Alongside the financial chaos has come a string of reputational blows. Two claims of harassment against the council were upheld at an employment tribunal. To top it off, last year Jones was suspended by Peterborough’s Labour group after referring to victims of grooming gangs as “poor white trash in Rotherham”.

Jones has since been replaced by Shabina Qayyum, an NHS GP and the city’s first female leader in nearly three decades. Qayyum was herself suspended from Labour in 2021 under an anti-Semitism probe but was reinstated to the party (saying she “apologised profusely for any hurt or upset”) and last year inherited this floundering authority, one that is still struggling to answer questions over how a council-owned building worth £4.6m was sold for just £1. In such circumstances, an election would force a reckoning with past leadership and the culture that allowed these failures to persist.

In Redditch, tensions have already spilled over into open disorder. Police were called to a council meeting after a Labour councillor branded a member of the public a Nazi during a heated debate over election delays. That confrontation came against the backdrop of a borough still reeling from the suspension of its former Labour leader, Joe Baker, who pleaded not guilty to sexual offences after just 11 months in charge. He will appear in court for a trial in January 2028. Sharon Harvey took over in May 2025 alongside her work as a pastoral manager for Trinity High School Redditch.

The council’s problems are not confined to personalities. Redditch has been criticised for the poor condition of its town centre, with residents describing it as “a dump” after road signs were left broken for months. Social housing in the borough has received the lowest possible rating from the regulator. Council tax has been raised. Unsurprisingly, those in charge are asking to delay for financial reasons, rather than submitting themselves to the judgment of voters.

“It’s extraordinary,” says Copus. “There are people on the streets of Iran dying so they can elect a government and council leaders here are saying ‘Oh, let’s cancel it to save some money’. Local elections are part of a regular cycle; they are budgeted for and councils know how much they will cost – cancelling them is not going to magically fill all the potholes.”

Worthing, a Labour-run council on the south coast, tells a similar story. Former celebrity reporter Sophie Cox runs the authority, which faces a £4m budget shortfall and admits it will need exceptional government funding for the “foreseeable future”. More than 30 per cent of its annual budget is forecast to be swallowed by temporary and emergency accommodation, with homelessness cited as the cause of repeated overspends.

At the same time, Worthing carries borrowing debts of £215m, and has drawn ridicule for culture-war skirmishes, including councillors claiming that flying St George’s flags risked “hostility and division”. Cox regularly speaks passionately about climate change, but for residents facing rising bills and shrinking services, this ideological focus can feel misplaced.

In Blackburn with Darwen, the council is looking at a £7.8m budget shortfall and a catalogue of governance failures. It has been issued with an improvement notice after a woman was killed by a falling tree branch in a council-run park in an incident that is still under investigation by government safety regulators (the council say that there was “no precautionary work” that could have prevented the incident). The authority spent £78,000 on staff parking and one councillor was found to have failed to pay £6,600 in council tax. It has also been forced to confront the legacy of serious abuse suffered by a woman while living in a council-run children’s home. The council didn’t admit liability, but agreed an out-of-court settlement.

Its Labour leader, Phil Riley, has held power since 2022 and previously served as deputy leader for seven years. The continuity of leadership has brought experience – but also responsibility for the institutional failures now laid bare.

Viewed individually, each of these councils can point to mitigating factors that explain their need for an election delay. But taken together, a pattern emerges of badly-run authorities looking for extra time.

Equally, democracy, like bin collections or housing policy, works best when it is not postponed. And when councils with the most troubled records are also the most eager to push elections into the long grass, voters are entitled to suspect that it is the incumbents themselves that are being protected.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]