A Labour minister vanished into thin air this morning, midway through a gruelling conversation about why the government has scrapped elections next year. Local government minister Alison McGovern had already endured a stuttering interview as she struggled to explain how the government will lift people out of poverty.
LBC’s Nick Ferrari appeared incredulous at one point, as Ms McGovern claimed the government’s freeze on rail fares would help the poorest. Mr Ferrari pointed out: “How will freezing train fares help people? I very much doubt they’re regularly using trains minister. You think someone on the edge of poverty is regularly getting on trains?”
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Ms McGovern insisted it would help as they want to get more people into work. After also failing to recall the median income in Britain, Mr Ferrari turned to the Government’s highly controversial decision yesterday to scrap mayoral elections across swathes of England.
The star LBC host asked: “Why has it been deemed necessary that 7.5 million can’t vote for their mayors next year?”
Ms McGovern began answering: “So the new mayors you’re referring to, they’re inaugural mayors, they’re new posts, the process we’re undergoing is to reorganise local government so we have unitary councils, where at the moment we have districts and counties.
“And the reason for that is there’s a lot of confusion about who does what in areas where you have districts and counties. Large areas of the country already have unitaries and we think that’s more effective so we want to introduce the mayors when we’ve got a stronger system of local government.”
Mr Ferrari pointed out that in all the areas where the mayoral elections have been delayed, the council elections are going ahead.“Can I put it to you that your party knows you’ll lose!”
Ms McGovern insisted “that’s not the case”, but shortly later completely disappeared from the interview. After a few seconds silence Mr Ferrari asked “hello? I think the line’s just frozen. Can you hear me?
“I sense we’ve lost the minister there… it’s gone. Oh the line has completely gone.”
He added: “I was just going to ask how we managed it in two months during World War 2 but not today.”
Yesterday Nigel Farage erupted at the government’s decision to scrap next year’s elections, which experts said Reform UK would clean up in.
Mr Farage accused Sir Keir Starmer of running an “authoritarian” government and doesn’t “believe in democracy”.
 Farage declared: “It shows the total and utter disdain this country has for liberty, democracy, freedom and everything we have held dear. I have to say personally I increasingly hold the individuals that run this government with absolute and total contempt”
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