{"id":644936,"date":"2025-12-20T21:16:20","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T21:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/644936\/"},"modified":"2025-12-20T21:16:20","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T21:16:20","slug":"labours-britain-compared-to-north-korea-over-delays-to-local-elections-absolute-lunacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/644936\/","title":{"rendered":"Labour&#8217;s Britain compared to &#8216;North Korea&#8217; over delays to local elections: &#8216;Absolute lunacy!&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"\">Labour&#8217;s Britain has been compared to &#8220;North Korea&#8221; as Jeff Banks delivered his scathing assessment of the Government&#8217;s decision to postpone local elections.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to GB News, the ex-BBC presenter and businessman hit out at the &#8220;absolute lunacy&#8221; of Labour to delay the opportunity for voters to have their say in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Criticising Labour, Mr Banks told host Nana Akua: &#8220;I think it&#8217;s just obvious this Government are so scared of what&#8217;s actually coming up next year in the May elections.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And they&#8217;re doing everything they can to ramp up the barrier and prevent it wherever they can, and it&#8217;s just an indication of how despotic this Government is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Comparing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer&#8217;s reign to North Korea, he added: &#8220;I actually get a feeling that by stopping it, we&#8217;re living in like a kind of North Korean state now, where we&#8217;re actually having Government now prevent elections.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Elections which give people their democratic right and say, and it&#8217;s being prevented. And I just hold my hands up, I think it&#8217;s appalling.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>As Nana argued that the Government want to postpone due to creating more &#8220;unitary bodies&#8221; within local councils, Mr Banks disagreed.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8220;Well, it&#8217;s been going on okay for the last 80 years. It&#8217;s fine if they want to redraw the boundary, but you don&#8217;t hold everything up waiting for an election.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"bfd49\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"38411dd3df5f5b9c1c9f01b339048fb0\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" class=\"rm-shortcode rm-lazyloadable-image \" lazy-loadable=\"true\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%201280%20720'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" data-runner-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/keir-starmer-jeff-banks.jpg\" width=\"1280\" height=\"720\" alt=\"Keir Starmer, Jeff Banks\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Jeff Banks compared Labour&#8217;s Britain to &#8216;North Korean state&#8217; over plans to delay local elections<\/p>\n<p> | <\/p>\n<p>PA \/ GB NEWS<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Because they could still have the elections, then redraw the boundaries subsequently, and that would be an efficient way of doing it, and we&#8217;ve been doing that for years.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Weighing in on the delays, Climate Party leader Ed Gemmell took aim at the &#8220;ridiculous&#8221; decision, expressing sympathy for voters&#8217; local councillors who want to stand at the next elections.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8220;I think it&#8217;s ridiculous. I&#8217;m a councillor in a unitary authority, originally the district and county elections happened, we ended up with a lot of councillors elected, they were brought together then into a unitary authority without an election because they were already elected.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;And then the next time the election came along, it was thinned out. So I&#8217;m totally against what they&#8217;re doing.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"f0407\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"876c8b32773bb460eaf7f38b7f65d821\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" class=\"rm-shortcode rm-lazyloadable-image \" lazy-loadable=\"true\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%201920%201080'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" data-runner-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ed-gemmell.png\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" alt=\"Ed Gemmell\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Ed Gemmell told GB News he is &#8216;completely against&#8217; delaying local elections<\/p>\n<p> | <\/p>\n<p>GB NEWS<\/p>\n<p>He added: &#8220;I think it&#8217;s wrong for the point of view of voters, who will think &#8216;I let you in for four years, I want you for four years. I don&#8217;t want you for five or six or seven unless I want to put you back, and then I&#8217;ll put you back&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s ways of organising it so that people can go to the elections, they can vote for the right people they want, and if it has to come back again a year or two years later on, that&#8217;s the way of the world, that&#8217;s the way to do it.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I also feel for all of the councillors and would-be councillors in exactly the same way. They should know it&#8217;s coming in four years. They get ready for it, they prepare for it and then they go for it and they win or they lose.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Highlighting the Government&#8217;s decision to ask council leaders if they would like to postpone their elections, Mr Banks said: &#8220;The other thing I think is absolute lunacy is that they&#8217;re now saying to those councils, would you like to hang on? <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"43e3e\" data-rm-shortcode-id=\"14c9480af6615c4fd2605266dcdf85c0\" data-rm-shortcode-name=\"rebelmouse-image\" class=\"rm-shortcode rm-lazyloadable-image \" lazy-loadable=\"true\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20xmlns='http:\/\/www.w3.org\/2000\/svg'%20viewBox='0%200%201920%201080'%3E%3C\/svg%3E\" data-runner-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/jeff-banks.png\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" alt=\"Jeff Banks\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Mr Banks told GB News that Labour is &#8216;running scared&#8217; of Reform UK<\/p>\n<p> | <\/p>\n<p>GB NEWS<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t realise how much the chief executive of a local council gets us a salary. It&#8217;s like anything between \u00a3150,000 and \u00a3420,000 a year. No wonder they want to hang on to the job.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Noting the success of Reform UK, Mr Banks claimed Labour is &#8220;running scared&#8221; of Nigel Farage&#8217;s party.<\/p>\n<p>He asked Mr Gemmell: &#8220;Do you think the reason at the bottom of it is because they&#8217;re so scared about how Reform are actually going to do in those local elections?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mr Gemmell responded: &#8220;It wouldn&#8217;t surprise me. I think there is going to be a big change &#8211; you&#8217;ve got the Green Party, you&#8217;ve got Reform, you&#8217;ve got a surge for pretty much everybody except the two main parties. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So I think they will be scared stiff of anything that&#8217;s going to happen next year, both of them, Labour and Conservatives.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labour&#8217;s Britain has been compared to &#8220;North Korea&#8221; as Jeff Banks delivered his scathing assessment of the Government&#8217;s&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,197982,12,1144,285,712,5782,16,3106,15,6225,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-644936","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-nana-akua","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-northern-ireland","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-scotland","18":"tag-shows","19":"tag-uk","20":"tag-uk-politics","21":"tag-united-kingdom","22":"tag-video-news","23":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115753974860000076","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}