LEE ANDERSON’S defection to become Reform UK’s first MP illustrates a worsening crisis in the Conservative Party — but for anti-racists it raises bigger issues.
Labour’s charge that it shows Rishi Sunak is “too weak to lead” his party is clearly true.
The Prime Minister saw the necessity of withdrawing the whip from an MP who accused London’s Muslim mayor of enabling an Islamist takeover of the capital city, a plainly ludicrous charge.
Yet he remains terrified of losing the support of the racist right of his party — or undermining an electoral strategy built around performative anti-immigrant showboating like the Rwanda deportations scheme.
Hence the soft-spoken response to Anderson’s desertion — “we regret he’s made this decision. Voting for Reform can’t deliver anything apart from a Keir Starmer-led government…”
Hence too Sunak’s inconsistency in punishing Anderson but not former home secretary Suella Braverman, whose claim in a national newspaper that Islamists have taken over the entire country was even wilder.
Sunak has no confidence in his own authority to discipline MPs, and no wonder. His party trails dismally in the polls, and besides he was never elected by anyone — not the public, but not even the Conservative Party membership, who rejected him in favour of Liz Truss.
All he can do is plead for unity on the grounds that votes for Reform UK will help Labour into power by splitting the right. In the process he blurs further the distinction between Establishment and far-right politics in Britain, insisting that the Tories are the natural home of voters mobilised by Reform UK’s fixations — hostility to immigrants above all, but also climate denialism and Covid conspiracy theories.
There is nothing new here. The government, which admits that its attacks on refugee rights “push the envelope” on adherence to international law and declares itself the champion of motorists while scrapping railway investment and electric vehicle targets, has already brought the politics of the radical right into Downing Street.
Now the MP for Ashfield is outside the tent pissing in, Sunak will be even more the plaything of the hard right as he attempts to deter other defections and win over the 10 per cent or so of voters whom polls suggest currently back Reform UK.
But while Labour smugly informs voters that “the Conservatives are falling apart,” it pushes the same narratives that got Anderson suspended in the first place.
Anderson is not alone in smearing the hundreds of thousands who march for peace as enemies of British democracy.
He was disowned not for defaming the biggest street movement Britain has seen for 20 years, but for associating it with an Establishment politician, Sadiq Khan.
The same PM who suspended him stood on the steps of No 10 shortly afterwards, responding to the election of George Galloway in Rochdale on a pro-Palestine platform with dire warnings about extremists taking over our streets and threatening our institutions.
His speech, which trailed Tory plans to broaden the definition of extremism we expect from Michael Gove this week, tied the Rochdale vote to the myth that MPs’ safety is compromised by Palestine solidarity demonstrations — a myth originating with Keir Starmer and the dirty tricks used to prevent Parliament voting on an SNP ceasefire motion.
Starmer promptly backed the PM, saying he was right “to condemn the unacceptable and intimidatory behaviour that we have seen recently.”
No wonder Anderson feels his suspension was “unpalatable.” The preposterous falsehood that the country has been overrun by Islamists is promoted by both front benches.
There is little merit and less use in condemning Islamophobia from back-bench MPs, or waxing indignant at the growth in support for a toxic outfit like Reform UK, if we do not challenge the big Westminster parties for promoting the same poisonous lies.
