Nigel Farage in authorized bid to dam election delays that threat turning Britain right into a ‘banana republic’ the place FIVE MILLION folks will lose their vote

Nigel Farage is to launch an immediate legal bid to prevent dozens of councils scrapping elections due to be held in May.

Ministers announced last month that they were inviting councils in areas undergoing local government reorganisation to postpone their elections.

The move triggered an angry backlash, with critics accusing Keir Starmer of ‘running scared of voters’ ahead of elections in May in which Labour is expected to get a bloody nose.

At least 30 councils, covering a combined population of more than five million people, are thought to have applied for a postponement ahead of Wednesday night’s deadline.

Mr Farage – who said the plans were worthy of a ‘banana republic’ – is expected to launch High Court proceedings today to get the decision overturned.

The Reform UK leader, whose party is likely to be the biggest loser from any delay, said he was ‘primed and ready’ to seek a judicial review of the Government’s plans.

‘We’re about settling our arguments at the ballot box,’ he said. ‘We have this so we that we don’t have to fight each other. That principle is what generations that went before gave so much to defend and if the others won’t fight it, we will.’

He said the delays were ‘the actions, not just of a Labour government, but with the connivance of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats. Denying elections is the behaviour of a banana republic.’

Ministers invited 63 councils undergoing reorganisation to delay elections. In some cases, elections could be postponed for a second year running.

The deadline for applications was midnight on Wednesday and at least 30, mostly Labour councils, are thought to have applied.

Around two-thirds of the councils involved are controlled by Labour, including Blackburn, Preston, Exeter, and Thurrock.

May’s local elections are widely seen as a litmus test for Sir Keir’s stuttering leadership.

Delays could deprive Reform UK of the chance to gain further political momentum against both Labour and the Conservatives.

But they could also limit Labour’s losses and boost Sir Keir’s chances of survival.

The list of councils seeking delays also includes some large Tory-controlled councils, such as East Sussex, West Sussex and Suffolk and Lib Dem-run Cheltenham.

Local government minister Alison McGovern defended the move last month, saying many councils had ‘expressed anxiety about their capacity to deliver a smooth and safe transition to new councils, alongside running resource-intensive elections to councils proposed to be shortly abolished’.

But a government source on Wednesday said it was ‘sensible’ to allow councils facing a shake-up to avoid costly and ‘unnecessary’ elections.

‘This is sensible stuff – councils are being reorganised to free up money for things that people really care about, like social care or fixing potholes,’ the source said.

‘They may need to delay elections where old councils are being abolished so we can move faster on elections to the new councils that will replace them.

‘If opposition parties want to use this to score political points the only people that will suffer are taxpayers – whose money will be spent on unnecessary elections rather than front-line services.’

A third of the councils are two-tier authorities which face being converted into unitaries. A source said merging them would reduce the number of councillors by 5,000 and get rid of 120 senior executive roles, producing significant savings.

But the Electoral Commission has said the delays are not justified and warned they risked ‘damaging public confidence’.

The watchdog, which oversees elections in the UK, said it did not think ‘capacity constraints are a legitimate reason for delaying long-planned elections’.

Vijay Rangarajan, the watchdog’s chief executive, said there was also ‘a clear conflict of interest in asking existing councils to decide how long it will be before they are answerable to voters’.