Brexiter will take calls in slot on Nick Ferrari’s breakfast show, with no topic off limits, LBC says

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Jacob Rees-Mogg is to host a fortnightly phone-in on the national talk radio station LBC, the broadcaster has announced.

The Brexiter will take calls for 30 minutes during Nick Ferrari’s breakfast show, with no topic off limits, the station said.

Rees-Mogg’s staunch support for a hard Brexit has seen him championed by the right wing of the Conservative party and touted as a contender to replace Theresa May as leader. A polarising figure, he also opposes abortion, even in cases of rape, and gay marriage.

Rees-Mogg, educated at Eton and Trinity College, Oxford, also attracted criticism when he described food banks as showing a “rather uplifting” picture of Britain.

By appearing on LBC, he will follow in the footsteps of fellow Brexiters Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson.

Farage was given his own show, which he still presents, in January last year. The former Ukip leader had appeared regularly on the station as a guest and stood in for Katie Hopkins, who left last May after she called for a “final solution” following the Manchester Arena terrorist attack.

Johnson hosted a phone-in called Ask Boris while he was the mayor of London.

Other politicians who have had their own slots on the station include Nick Clegg, while he was deputy prime minister, and Ken Livingstone, another former mayor of London. Livingstone’s Saturday morning show was dropped by the station in 2016 after he said Adolf Hitler had supported Zionism, though he claimed his comments had not prompted the decision.

Johnson’s successor as mayor, Sadiq Khan, hosts the monthly Speak to Sadiq phone-in on LBC.

Ferrari is known as a provocateur, often getting into heated arguments with guests and callers. In 2016, he was cleared by regulators of causing harm or offence by describing the Paris attacks as a “Muslim problem” and telling a caller to leave the country if he objected to UK government policy.

Backers of Rees-Mogg have sought to mirror the success of Corbyn on social media, by whipping up “Moggmentum”. He has played down his prospects of standing for leader, despite criticising the party’s 2017 election campaign and the Brexit negotiations, without definitively ruling it out. He is currently the bookies’ favourite to succeed May.