Lee Anderson. The Great Lurching Right Show
Earlier this year Lee Anderson resigned as a Deputy Chair of the Tories after a year in post. He opposed Sunak’s Rwanda Bill because it wasn’t racist enough. But instead of voting against it he abstained because Labour MPs were sniggering at him.
It suggested that he doesn’t have the moral fibre to be part of a far right grouping associated with Braverman and Jenrick. Anderson then said he wanted his Deputy job back and quite likes Rishi really. It didn’t happen.
Rishi Sunak had a minor reshuffle in early February 2023, or as many saw it, re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Someone who did have that you view- as he had recently made the comment on WhatsApp- was Ashfield MP Lee Anderson.
‘Red Wall’ MP Anderson who sits for Ashfield will almost certainly lose his seat at the next Election but in the meantime he had almost a year as Tory Deputy Chair.
Anderson who was a Labour member until 2018 is a hard to far right Tory MP who has frequently made comments many would see as racist about asylum seekers, is transphobic and was warned not to use the Anti-Semitic phrase ‘cultural Marxism’.
He was at it again last week making racist comments about London Mayor Sadiq Khan that led to Labour calling for him to be sacked.
It might be noted though that it was Labour manoeuvres over the Parliamentary vote on Gaza that helped to create the political climate for Anderson to lurch even further to the right. Eventually he was suspended from the Tory Parliamentary Group with Sunak saying on 26th February that is comments were unacceptable. This simply caused Anderson to underline he would not apologise and renew his attack on Sadiq Khan.
Anderson come to public attention for his views on food banks. He is on record as saying that they are an ‘industry’, that they are used by people who don’t know how to cook and that a budget of 30p a day is enough to buy food.
The last comment related to the cost of food for an individual in a mass collective cooking project which sounds a bit socialist for Anderson.
Sunak who is the richest MP in Parliament probably doesn’t fully grasp the Anderson, food bank, cost of living issue. Many others will have so it’s no surprise the deckchairs on the Titanic need further re-arrangement.
After his appointment Anderson lost no time in shooting his mouth off in his new role by calling for the return of the death penalty because it is deterrent. Like other Anderson sayings this is of course evidence free. It is not currently Tory policy
The contradictions of Anderson were laid out in an Editorial in the Murdoch Times over a year ago on 10th February 2023. Headed ‘Loose Cannon’ it noted the last thing Sunak needs ‘is another personality focused distraction’.
Anderson leads a group of hard right Tory MPs the Blue Collar Conservatives who claim to represent working class voters. Don’t expect to see them supporting strikes or opposing anti-union legislation though.
Anderson now sits ranting as an independent on th back benches. If current polling is reliable he will soon be losing his seat as well. After which one suspects his GB News show will disappear as well. Perhaps he will accept cash reportedly on offer from Reform UK and depart even farther rightwards. Particularly as he has now lost the Tory Whip. Certainly his comments appeared to be motivated by Farage and Reform Party leader Tice has again invited him to join.
Given the Telegraph (26th Feb) suggests that Anderson has the support of some Tory ‘Red Wall’ MPs who are very likely to lose their seats at the Election and so have nothing to lose,a Tory split to the far or further right may be in progress.
Christopher Chope who does politics for the Telegraph and GBNews (perhaps they will have the same owner soon..) has tweeted
Former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson held private ‘one to one’ talks with Richard Tice, the leader of the Reform UK party, at a Holiday Inn hotel, at junction 28 of the M1 in South Normanton, Derbyshire on Sunday, 24 hours after he lost the Tory whip.
Chope mainly makes mischief for Sunak’s Tories but unlike nearly everyone else on GBNews he does have a journalistic pedigree
The ramping up further of his right-wing rhetoric is unlikely to end well for either the Tories or him. The problem is those that will get caught up in the collateral damage of Islamphobia it may well provoke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Anderson_(British_politician)
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