Children’s Minister Josh MacAlister was sent out on the morning media round to justify the government’s decision to cancel four mayoral elections next year – for the second year running. Nigel Farage tore into the move, calling it “actions of despots, not democrats”. MacAlister offered up a distinctly flimsy line of defence to Sky News:
“To be fair, we have only recently become the government, this is a new set of devolution that we are bringing forward. We are speeding this up in a major way. The people who are saying this are the same people who not that many years ago were proroguing parliament. We will take no lectures from them.”
Labour is braced for a hammering in next year’s locals, though Sussex & Brighton, Hampshire & the Solent, Greater Essex, and Norfolk & Suffolk contests have now all been kicked into the long grass until 2028. Meanwhile, Reform has been gaining ground in the latter two regions. Starmer running scared…
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”