The Duran Podcast - Starmer popularity problems... Solution, delay elections

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

Starmer popularity problems... Solution, delay elections

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the situation in the UK. And it looks like we have some voting that is going to be canceled, some elections that are going to be canceled, courtesy of Kirstemer. What's going on? Well, indeed. And can I just say that this is an unprecedented situation. I've been following British electoral politics for all of my adult life. And I've never seen anything like this happen. and it's not getting in Britain

anything like the kind of attention that it needs. So we have the most unpopular government that I can remember. It is now polling third behind reform of the Conservatives and that is very bad because the Conservatives are polling very badly. They're still polling well below 20%,

which is an astonishingly low figure for the Conservative Party. The Labour Party's polling less than that is polling between 15 and 18%, depending on which opinion poll you see. That is unprecedented for a governing party in Britain over such an extended period. I mean, there was brief moments,

for example, under Theresa May, when the Conservatives dropped to those sort of levels. But they quickly bounced back. This time, Labour Party is stuck at these abysmal levels and has been stuck there for month after month, after month, I hear that when canvases from the Labour Party go and knock on doors in, you know, by-elections that take place regularly in Britain, the language they receive from the people that they speak to, the voters they speak to, is absolutely.

unprintable. So the Labour Party is in a very, very difficult position. Keir Stama is in an incredibly difficult position. He's popularity, as we've discussed in many programs, has collapsed. People are responding extraordinarily fiercely against him, you know, with the canvases. When they go out, they get, as I said, things about Stama that are also unprintable. there is much talk about Stama's own stability, his position as Prime Minister. Over the last few months, there's been a lot of talk within the Labour Party that if the Labour Party does badly in the May regional and local elections, then Stama's position will collapse and he will be forced to step down.

So Stama and his team have found the solution. to that, wherever there are there are in problems, they simply cancel the elections. Now, I've never seen that happen before. They, there is, they've used a little known clause in a Blairite local election law that dates from 2000, a law about the administration of local elections from 2000, which says that in emergency situations, elections can be postponed. And they're doing this all over the UK. And the emergency is various local government reorganisations and reforms, which of course have never been seen as emergencies before. I mean, emergencies as, you know, when there's a power shortage,

or whether there's a major crisis or whether there's a major incident and something like, that, that's a dangerous for people to go out and vote. I've never heard or known of a situation where reorganizations of local government have been used as an excuse to delay elections. But this is increasingly being done and apparently we've now already had decisions to postpone elections in places where 3.8 million people live. live. And by the way, I should explain, these elections in May are in England and Wales, not in Scotland, and not in London, by the way. They're specifically outside London and outside Scotland. So almost four million people accounts for a significant proportion of the people

who were due to vote in these elections. And there are some cases. where the elections have been postponed in conservative held councils. But the great, far and away the greater number are Labor ones. And I suspect that the reason they're doing it in conservative held councils is because if it was only Labor councils, it would be even more difficult to justify and impossible to justify in court. And we now know that there are legal challenges inevitably coming. Is that the labor reform response to this?

I mean, this is what they've got? Yes. I'm sorry, conservative. The conservative reform is legal challenges? Yeah, legal challenges, the judicial review in the high court, which could take weeks and months, probably weren't to finish by May. My next question is, is all this going to be wrapped up by May? I mean, it sounds kind of...

I doubt it. Okay, you have to go to the courts, I understand that. Yeah. But shouldn't you take this to the people? Well, of course you should. There's no attempt to do so. I mean, it again demonstrates the extraordinary lack of political vitality and activism in Britain today and the intense demoralization of British society.

It's something like this had been attempted by, say, Margaret Thatcher back in the 1980s, or Harold Wilson in the 1970s. There would have been absolute uproar. I mean, there would have been protests. There would have been demonstrations. All sorts of people would have weighed in. There would be furious articles and headlines in the newspapers. There would be editorial commentaries.

There would have been all kinds of things going on. This time, this thing is being conducted and has been done against a backdrop of relative silence. So the elections are going to be cancelled. I mean, it seems like Stomber's going to get his way. Isn't that a terrible precedent going forward as well? It is an appalling precedent. I mean, I don't know that they're going to cancel the elections entirely, but they're going to reduce them to the level.

Well, they'll be able to say, well, actually, you know, these are not really representative of the true mood of the electors, because as a result of these emergencies, the elections didn't happen. in enough places that we don't need to replace starma. And of course the other thing, and this is a key thing to understand, is that you leave the Labour Party in control of large sways of local government, which is important both politically because it means you preserve your local party structures, which are based around local councils in the UK.

But of course, it also means that, you know, you still maintain your contacts with the business communities and with other groups in these places. And that is important in itself. And this process of postponing elections has now taken on an enormous quality. I mean, there's been a surge of stopping elections in all kinds of places over the last few weeks. but it's already been happening for some time. Basically, the government, the Labour government, started to do it from pretty much as soon as they were elected. So already elections that were supposed to have happened in some places

a year, two years ago, have been postponed. Councillors have been left in place for two years beyond their electoral limit. So, you know, you could see, you could see, we're gradually moving away from a state where people are elected to government to a state where its administration, people are appointed to run things. And that's increasingly what is happening. And that is, it seems, the future of Britain today. It is a terrible precedent, as you absolutely rightly say, and we're going to get more and more of this. I think that's the way things are heading throughout the entire collective West, isn't it?

Not only the UK. Yes. Well, certainly, certainly in Europe. Certainly in Europe, it's what you're increasingly starting to see. I mean, there was, when I was a student long ago, I remember that the left, one of the slogans of the very far left people, was that if elections ever changed, this is very much a left-wing slogan at that time.

If elections changed anything, they would be abolished. Well, they are now being abolished, and they're being abolished by a government, which is supposedly of the left. Just to say, probably Stama as a student was one of the people who would have said those things. Right. So supposedly of the left. Supposedly of the left. All right. All right.

Is there anything else that you want to add to this? The situation in Britain is deteriorating all the time. I've been reading with great interest. and growing frustration, articles which the government has been basically getting published in the media telling us how good law and order situation in London is, for example. As you know, I don't want to get into details, I have personal reasons to know otherwise. And people who live in London will tell you the same thing. there is a steady deterioration in the quality of life and in the law and order situation in London and in other cities and the economy continues to decline.

So that is the reality but change the ability that people have always exercised in Britain. Well, not just in living memory, but for long before to express their dissatisfaction with the government through the ballot box is eroding away. Yeah, well, the ballot box, the powers that be, they don't want to hear people's complaints or dissatisfaction. Eat them bugs. You'll owe nothing and be happy. That's the motto. All right. We'll end it there.

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