Star Comment: Starmer's election climbdown is one U-turn all democrats should welcome
A criticism often levelled at the Prime Minister is that he is not a shrewd practitioner of the cut-and-thrust of party politics. More a technocrat than a man of the people, he struggles to understand how his actions are seen by ordinary members of the public.
And if anything sums up that argument, it has been his ham-fisted attempts to delay local elections in several areas of the country, not least in Cannock Chase.
We know the arguments. The Government is planning a - somewhat questionable - shake-up of local government, and holding elections for local authorities which are soon to disappear is a waste of public money.
But putting a monetary cost on the value of democracy - particularly when all the evidence suggested that cancelling elections would have been the only way the Labour Party would have avoided embarrassing losses - is at best naive, and at worst downright cynical.
We therefore welcome the Government's last-minute climbdown on this pernicious decision, two days before it was due to be challenged in the High Court by Reform UK. But while it is right that democracy will now prevail, we abhor that the taxpayer will be left to foot the bill for Reform UK's legal costs in a dispute that should never have escalated to this level.
At a time when democracy appears to be under such great threat all around the world, it is crucially important that supposedly enlightened nations such as Britain set a shining example.
Instead, the Prime Minister's inept meddling has brought British democracy into disrepute - and left the taxpayer with a whopping legal bill to boot.
