‘Delays today, stronger democracy tomorrow – Labour is right to wait for SV for mayoral elections’

“Only dictators cancel elections”, lambast the protectors of democracy at Reform UK. “A scandalous attempt to subvert democracy”, shouted the Conservatives’ Shadow Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, James Cleverly. 

Both Reform and the Tories wanted six new Mayoral elections in May 2026 to go ahead. They were planned, much like they were this past May, to take place under the first-past-the-post voting system. 

While it’s clear that during their tenure, the Tory government Cleverly served in made many attempts to subvert democracy, his framing of this decision is more than hypocrisy. It’s a pernicious lie and it needs to be squarely challenged. 

READ MORE: 2026 mayoral elections to be postponed for two years, government confirms

In the last spate of local elections, Reform won two new Mayoralties: Greater Lincolnshire, where they won with the support of 12.56% of the electorate, and Hull and East Yorkshire, where they won with 10.67% of the electorate. 

It makes sense for the Tories too. They won the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Mayoralty with 9.34% of the electorate voting for them. 

This isn’t anti-Right bias, either. Labour won the West of England Mayor with the votes of just 7.5% of the electorate. Under the Supplementary Vote system (SV), two of those elections would have seen a head-to-head Tory vs. Reform run-off in the second round. 

On top of this, the councils in two of the six new mayoralties – Cheshire and Warrington, and Cumbria – had already successfully applied to delay their elections. 

This is a problem of basic democracy. 

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FPTP, the government said when they announced the return of SV, undermines the mandate for individual positions such as Mayoralties. As the Economist modelled recently, with between four and six parties polling above 10%, the electoral system is making elections “as unpredictable as a night in Las Vegas”. 

When you factor in turnout (which is notoriously low at local elections) you end up with a fragile sliver of the electorate represented by their Mayor. These new Mayors wouldn’t start on thin ice; they’d immediately be treading water. 

Labour legislating to re-introduce the supplementary vote system in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill is a welcome sight. Moreover, the announcement that the four new Mayoralties due to be voted on using FPTP this coming May – Sussex and Brighton, Greater Essex, Hampshire and the Solent, and Norfolk and Suffolk – have been delayed is not “a scandalous attempt to subvert democracy”. It is the sensible, considered, and democratic thing to do. 

That’s why Compass has been so vocal in saying these elections need to be postponed until SV has been returned. Our paper responding to the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill highlighting the failure to give people real power in their places, featured North East Mayor Kim McGuinness, former Labour Minister John Denham, and more. 

Our local groups across Sussex have been organising letters to MPs, council leaders, local newspapers, and interventions in parliamentary debates. Thousands of local residents have taken action to prevent the democratic deficit they were to be placed under. 

This win belongs to them and the thousands of people who spoke up – and credit is due to the ministers who put a stop to the ridiculous conundrum of these four Mayors. 

But the question remains, why has the roll-out of the greatest transfer of power out of Whitehall and into local and regional government been this disjointed? Mayors announced, only to be delayed. Fiscal devolution ruled out in July, only to have the introduction of a tourist tax for local governments to levy announced in November. Devolution was promised, but the centralising tendency at the top of the party has made it deaf to the wisdom, experience, and demands of its councillors, members, voters, and the public at large. 

People want more power in communities and a less centralised government. People want to have a say over their lives. And demonstrated by the record high support for electoral reform in voters, the support from the majority of affiliated trade unions, and a super majority of support for PR amongst Labour members (66%), we know that people want an end to FPTP for all elections. 

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These delays are the right thing to do. This is the latest in a series of course-corrections from Labour. The next should be building on the support to modernise our voting system, work with movement for PR outside parliament, and the APPG on Fair Elections to deliver a National Commission on Electoral Reform. 

Because it’s not just Mayors that need a mandate. Every elected representative needs a mandate, at every level of government, at every election.

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