Mordaunt smoothes way back for Anderson

PENNY MORDAUNT appeared to accept that an article written by Lee Anderson was an apology as she urged the former deputy party chairman to stick with the Conservatives.

The Commons Leader said the 1,000word piece, written for the Express, was “the closest we will get to a one-word apology”.

Ms Mordaunt appealed to the Ashfield MP, who was suspended from the Tory party for suggesting that Sadiq Khan, the London Mayor, was controlled by “Islamists”, to “consider all the good” he could do with his position.

Mr Anderson has refused to rule out joining Reform UK, the Brexit Party successor founded by Nigel Farage.

It came after Lucy Powell, the shadow Commons leader, had called on Ms Mordaunt to agree that Mr Anderson had used racist and Islamophobic language in his remarks about Mr Khan.

In the Express, Mr Anderson insisted he was not racist, saying: “The point I was trying to make last week was that the Mayor of London has lost control of our capital city as the extremists who hide under the Islam banner take over our streets in their attempt to change the course of our democracy. These extremists are often labelled as Islamists which, on reflection, is totally unfair on Muslims in general.”

Ms Mordaunt told the Commons: “I know that she [Ms Powell] will want to hear one word from the Honourable Member for Ashfield, but yesterday he did provide us with 1,000. I read his piece and it is some distance from the view that he expressed in that interview, and I think that what he wrote is his genuine view. Those thousand words, we might have to accept, are the closest we will get to a one-word apology.”