Ex-Tory MP Lee Anderson defects to Reform UK

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Former Conservative deputy chair Lee Anderson has defected to Reform UK, handing the populist rightwing party its first MP and delivering a significant blow to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.

Anderson, picked by Sunak to take the Tory message into working-class “red wall” seats, said at a Westminster press conference: “All I want is my country back.”

The defection is a coup for Reform, a successor movement to the Brexit party founded by Nigel Farage that draws inspiration from Donald Trump. The party’s slogan is “Make Britain Great”.

With its strong anti-immigration message, Reform is feeding off the controversy over irregular migration and a recent upsurge in community tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

Sunak has struggled to respond to the threat from the right; in recent weeks he has claimed Britain is descending into “mob rule” before urging people to moderate their language and call for calm.

Anderson, speaking against a backdrop of union jack flags, said people who would “never integrate” were moving to Britain, adding: “I feel we are slowly giving our country away — our way of life.”

The switch by the MP for Ashfield came after he was stripped of the Tory whip last month after refusing to apologise for saying London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan was in the grip of Islamists.

He said he would not be resigning from the Commons to force a by-election, arguing that a general election could happen soon. Tory officials are confident about winning back Ashfield in a national contest expected this year.

Sunak appointed Anderson as Tory deputy chair in early 2023. He resigned from the role in January to rebel against flagship legislation aimed at getting Sunaks plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda off the ground, saying the bill should be toughened up.

The MP has now joined his third political party in six years. He was previously a Labour councillor before defecting to the Tories in 2018.

Richard Tice, leader of Reform, said Anderson would be a “no nonsense” champion for the red wall, the swath of traditionally Labour-voting constituencies in the Midlands and north of England, many of which switched to the Tories in 2019.

At the press conference on Monday, Tice said: “Nothing works — Britain is broken, and we all know who broke it.” He accused the Tories of having “imposed” mass migration on the UK, which he said was making the country poorer.

Tice decried “antisemitic, hate-filled, pro-Hamas marches”. Asked whether he was also worried about the rise in attacks against Muslims, he said the “most frightening” thing was the threat against the Jewish community.

Tice said his party was making headway in the red wall, as he described his ambition to “replace the Tories as the main alternative to Starmer-geddon”, a reference to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, who has a strong lead over Sunak in opinion polls.

According to the Financial Times’ UK general election poll tracker, Reform is polling at 11.2 per cent, up from about 6 per cent in March last year; the party secured more than 10 per cent of the vote in two recent by-elections.

Daisy Cooper, Liberal Democrat deputy leader, said Sunak’s “authority lies in tatters after the man he personally appointed to be deputy chairman of the Conservatives has defected to another party”.

The defection came ahead of a new extremism definition set to be unveiled by communities secretary Michael Gove on Thursday, an issue on which Reform wishes to focus.

One Labour shadow cabinet member said: “You’d expect them to stick to the economy, given that the Budget was last week. Instead of which they are playing straight into the hands of Reform.”

Anderson last year told local Tory activists in Cambridgeshire: “Now there is a political party that begins with an R that offered me a lot of money to join them. I say a lot of money, I mean a lot of money.”

But on Monday he insisted “no money has been offered at all”. Anderson, who presents a show on TV channel GB News, has a platform to criticise Sunak. “We don’t want words — we want action,” he said.

The Conservative party said: “Voting for Reform can’t deliver anything apart from a Keir Starmer-led Labour government that would take us back to square one — which means higher taxes, higher energy costs, no action on channel crossings and uncontrolled immigration.”

Tory rebels opposed to Sunak have claimed that if Farage returns to frontline politics ahead of an election, championing the case for Reform, their party could face “an extinction-level event”.

Pat McFadden, Labour’s election campaign chief, said the Conservatives were “falling apart”, adding: “The prime minister is too weak to lead a party too extreme to be led”.