Lee Anderson ducks questions on whether he will join Reform following Tory party suspension

Published

1 year ago

February 27, 2024

admin

Lee Anderson has dodged questions over whether he could join the Reform party following his suspension from the Conservatives for his attack on Sadiq Khan.

Mr Anderson, the now independent MP for Ashfield, was asked whether he would join the rival party led by Richard Tice but refused to answer.

Instead, all he said to reporters was: “What are you waiting here for?”

Mr Anderson was suspended by Rishi Sunak last weekend after he refused to apologise for claiming in an interview with GB News that “Islamists” had “control” over London and its mayor, Sadiq Khan.

The remarks have been widely condemned from across the political divide, and this morning Home Secretary James Cleverly told the Times that Mr Anderson should apologise directly to Mr Khan for his comments.

Politics latest: Post Office compensation tipped to exceed £1bn

Mr Anderson’s suspension has prompted questions about his future and whether he may join Reform, the party founded by Nigel Farage as an alternative for disaffected Tory voters that is now led by Mr Tice.

In an interview with GB News on Monday night, Mr Anderson did not rule out joining Reform.

“You’ll say Lee Anderson rules out/doesn’t rule out joining the Reform party, so I’m making no comment on my future,” he said on GB News, where he is a paid contributor.

Asked if he would be the Conservative candidate for his seat of Ashfield at the next election, Mr Anderson said: “That’s not up to me”.

However, he said he would still be standing at the next election.

In his original interview with GB News last week, Mr Anderson told the channel: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London.

“He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates.”

In a separate statement published by GB News on Monday, Mr Anderson admitted his words were “clumsy” but that they were “borne out of sheer frustration at what is happening to our beautiful capital city”.

However, he doubled down on his refusal to apologise, saying: “If you are wrong, apologising is not a sign of weakness but a sign of strength.

“But when you think you are right you should never apologise because to do so would be a sign of weakness.”

Rishi Sunak broke his silence to condemn Mr Anderson’s words against Mr Khan on Monday, calling them unacceptable and “wrong”.

The prime minister also rejected suggestions his party had “Islamophobic” tendencies in light of criticism from his own side, including from Tory peer Baroness Warsi who claimed a new generation of Conservatives were “dragging this great party… into the gutter”.

Baroness Warsi said that “not only is there a hierarchy of racism” in the Tory Party today, “anti-Muslim racism is being used as an electoral campaign tool” and that Muslims “don’t matter” and were considered “fair game”.

Speaking to Speaking on BBC Radio York, the prime minister denied the Tory party has “Islamophobic tendencies” and said: “Lee’s comments weren’t acceptable, they were wrong. That’s why he’s had the whip suspended.”

He added: “Words matter, especially in the current environment where tensions are running high. I think it’s incumbent on all of us to choose them carefully.”

However, the prime minister repeatedly refused to call Mr Anderson’s remarks Islamophobic while other ministers have refused to say whether the comments were racist.

Last November Mr Tice denied reports that Mr Anderson was offered money to defect to his party, telling Sky News “no money or cash has been offered to any Tory MP whatsoever”.

Earlier this month Mr Farage, who is now an honorary president at Reform, said he believed it was possible to replace the Conservatives with Reform as he predicted an “extinction event” for the government at the next election.

Politics

Is Keir Starmer falling into a small boats trap?

Published

2 hours ago

August 12, 2025

admin

Is Keir Starmer falling into a small boats trap?

As a milestone is reached of 50,000 migrants crossing the Channel since he became prime minister, Keir Starmer finds himself in a familiar place – seemingly unable to either stop the boats, or escape talking about them.

Home Office data shows 50,271 people made the journey since the election last July, after 474 migrants arrived on Monday. This is around 13,000 higher than the comparable period the previous year.

Politics Live: Starmer hits unwanted small boat crossings milestone

Starmer has tweeted more than 10 times about this issue in the past week alone, more than any other.

On Monday he wrote on X: “If you come to this country illegally, you will face detention and return. If you come to this country and commit a crime, we will deport you as soon as possible.”

It could be a tweet by a politician of any party on the right – and many voters (and Labour MPs) will say it’s right that the prime minister is taking this issue seriously.

Illegal – or irregular – migration is a relatively small proportion of total migration. Net migration was down at 431,000 in 2024 which the OCED say is comparable to other high-income countries. But it is of course highly visible and politically charged.

Nigel Farage’s Reform party have had a busy few months campaigning on it, and the prime minister has been toughening up his language in response.

Shortly after the local elections in May in which Reform won hundreds of seats and took control of councils, Starmer made his speech in which he warned: “In a diverse nation like ours, without fair immigration rules, we risk becoming an island of strangers.”

It outraged some in his own party, and he later said he regretted that language.

But it was part of a speech which made clear that he wanted action – vowing to end “years of uncontrolled migration” in a way “that will finally take back control of our borders and close the book on a squalid chapter for our politics.”

It’s a long way from his early months as Labour leader in 2020 when he said: “We welcome migrants, we don’t scapegoat them.” Migration did not feature as one of his five missions for “change” at the general election.

The strategy by Starmer and his minister is to talk up forthcoming new measures – a crackdown on social media adverts by traffickers, returns of people without a right to be in the UK which are indeed higher than under the Conservatives, and last week, a “one in, one out” deal with France to send people back across the channel.

The government say some people have been detained, although it is not known when these returns will happen. Ministers are also still pointing the finger at the previous Conservative government – which found stopping the boats easy to say and hard to achieve.

Baroness Jacqui Smith, a former home secretary, said this morning: “I don’t think it was our fault that it was enabled to take root. We’ve taken our responsibility to work internationally, to change the law, to improve the way in which the asylum system works, to take through legislation to strengthen the powers that are available.

“The last government did none of those things and focused on gimmicks. And it’s because of that, that the crime behind this got embedded in the way which it did. And that won’t be solved overnight.”

But for a prime minister who appears to have come to this issue reluctantly, talking about it a lot – and suggesting he’ll be judged on whether he can tackle it – risks raising expectations.

Joe Twyman, of the pollsters Deltapoll said: “You cannot simply out-Farage Nigel Farage when it comes to the subject of immigration. In a sense, Labour is falling into precisely the same trap that the Conservatives fell into. They’re giving significant prominence to a subject where they don’t have much control”.

Starmer has avoided mentioning firm numbers on how many migrants his crackdown may stop, but as previous prime ministers have found with the difficult issue of controlling migration, if you ask to be judged on delivery, voters will do so.