Culture Society, Identity and Belonging
Lee Anderson’s defection to the populist Reform party could be one of the (many) Westminster moments that sinks without a trace. Or maybe not.
Anderson, a former Conservative MP, GB News presenter and one-time party deputy chairman, lost the whip last month after he refused to apologise for saying that London’s mayor Sadiq Khan was under the control of Islamists. He is now Reform’s first MP, with the party polling at around 12 per cent – a high enough figure to erode the Conservative Party’s vote share. One Tory MP said Anderson’s departure “ramps up” the possibility of an early election, adding: “I don’t think anyone really thinks things will improve under the current regime.”
Either way, Anderson has ruled out a byelection, so the voters of Ashfield, a Red Wall seat, will not get a chance to have their say until the whole country goes to the polls.
Despite previously criticising Reform, Anderson was defiant at a press conference on Monday, saying: “Like millions of people in this country, I feel that we are slowly giving our country away. We are giving away our way of life.”
Some of his former colleagues were not sad to see him go. Jackie Doyle-Price, Conservative MP for Thurrock, tweeted: “Course he didn’t inform the Prime Minister [about his decision to defect]. Big girls blouse.”
While some speculated that only “one or two” others would follow him, Anderson’s departure has revived suspicions that Rishi Sunak may call an early election.
A former minister said Number 10 has been “not so much sounding [us] out as muttering darkly”, but added: “It’s so frenetic at the moment it’s hard to say.” Anderson was “a nice chap” with a “following in the Red Wall”, he added.
But another told Tortoise: “I think it just pushed the election back until Jan 25.”
Anderson’s decision could be self-motivated: in recent polling he was highly likely, as a Conservative MP, to lose his Ashfield seat. As a Reform MP with a large profile, he has given himself another roll of the dice.
The New Conservatives, a caucus set up by fellow 2019-intake MPs Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, issued a statement saying responsibility for Lee Anderson’s defection “sits with the Conservative Party”.
“We have failed to hold together the coalition of voters who gave us an 80 seat majority in 2019,” they said. “Those voters – in our traditional heartlands and in the Red Wall seats like Ashfield – backed us because we offered an optimistic, patriotic, no-nonsense Conservatism.
“Our poll numbers show what the public think of our record since 2019. We cannot pretend any longer that ‘the plan is working’. We need to change course urgently.”
Exactly how urgently remains to be seen.