Labour council leader attacks Starmer over local elections U-turn

A Labour council leader has accused Sir Keir Starmer’s Government of “sheer incompetence” over its local elections about-turn.

Gavin Callaghan, from Basildon council, has become the first Labour council leader to criticise the Government after the party abandoned plans to cancel local elections for 4.6 million people.

The decision followed The Telegraph’s Campaign for Democracy, which called for the delayed elections to go ahead this year.

The Government had justified the delays by claiming that a looming reorganisation of local authorities would make elections expensive, complicated and unnecessary. However, it was accused of disenfranchising voters so it could avoid a wipeout by Reform UK on May 7.

Basildon council was one of the local authorities affected by the about-turn.

Mr Callaghan criticised Sir Keir’s about-turn. In a post on Facebook, he said: “I asked to postpone the elections because I wanted Local Government Reorganisation in Essex to happen and Essex County Council to be abolished.”

“What is now clear is that local government was put in an impossible position by sheer incompetence from central government.”

Mr Callaghan added: “No one in this borough is more angry with this Prime Minister than me. But this election is not about Westminster. It is about Basildon.

“It is about whether we keep pushing forward with generation or whether we go back to the same people who failed this town for years and are ready to pull away investment in Basildon on day one.”

Mr Callaghan, who in 2017 was the youngest council leader in the UK, is not one of the 14 Basildon councillors up for re-election in May.

It is a Labour minority-run local authority, with Mr Callaghan’s party holding 16 out of 42 council seats.

Among the seats set to be contested are five held by Labour councillors, four by Conservatives, and one held by a Reform councillor.

The Telegraph previously reportedon  how Mr Callaghan was told by his own officers to consider taking social media training after he was accused of “bullying” Sam Journet, a Reform UK councillor, by calling him “thick as mince” and referring to him as “sweaty Sam”.

Mr Callaghan was also accused of implying that Mr Journet had been hired on a diversity ticket rather than merit.

Meanwhile, Mr Journet accused Gillian Palmer, the deputy mayor, of making an obscene hand gesture while he was speaking at a meeting. The council later confirmed it had received a complaint, but The Telegraph was not able to verify its outcome.

In a Facebook post, Mr Callaghan suggested that his Labour colleague’s gesture was an exercise to help with her carpal tunnel syndrome, a condition that affects nerves.

Monitoring officers concluded that while “there may be a potential breach in the code” in relation to complaints against Mr Callaghan, the allegations were “not serious enough to warrant any sanction, other than a recommendation for training” and that it would “not be in the public interest to investigate”.

In response to the complaint findings, Mr Callaghan replied: “It would be entirely inaccurate to suggest I’ve been found to have breached the member code of conduct for the allegations you laid out. I have not.”

[Source: Daily Telegraph]