Tories urged to change course as more MPS may join Reform
TORY MPS have demanded that Rishi Sunak change course “urgently” after Lee Anderson defected to Reform UK yesterday and the party claimed it was discussing a similar move with at least 10 Conservatives.
The leaders of the New Conservatives group said the blame for the former Tory deputy chairman switching allegiance lay with the Tory Party itself.
“Our poll numbers show what the public think of our record since 2019,” Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, who represent MPS on the Right of the party, write in today’s Telegraph. “We cannot pretend any longer that ‘the plan is working’. We need to change course urgently.”
It came as a Reform UK source claimed that the number of Tory MPS in talks about possible defections was in “low double figures”. Meanwhile, the Prime Minister met with the executive of the 1922 Committee yesterday evening. The meeting, which had been in the diary prior to yesterday’s events, comes amid mounting pressure on Mr Sunak as his party trails in the polls.
Announcing his defection to Reform UK at a press conference yesterday morning, Mr Anderson declared: “I want my country back.” The Ashfield MP lost the Tory whip last month over his refusal to apologise for claims that Islamists had “got control” of Sadiq Khan and London.
Mr Khan said yesterday: “This is a man who, more than two weeks ago, said things that were clearly Islamophobic, anti-muslim and racist. The leader of his [former] party, the Prime Minister, hasn’t got the guts and the backbone to call them what they are, can’t utter the word ‘Islamophobia’.”
Mr Anderson accused the Tory Party of “stifling free speech”, as he insisted he was speaking “on behalf of millions of people up and down the country”. Nigel Farage, honorary president of Reform UK, said the move was more significant than Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless joining Ukip in 2014, as this was about “how Britain is broken”.
Downing Street was yesterday forced to deny that there had been a split in Mr Sunak’s team about how to handle Mr Anderson’s suspension. It came after reports emerged that Liam Booth-smith, his chief of staff, had “let it be known” that he urged caution against removing the whip. Former minister Sir Jacob Rees-mogg also said it was an “error” to have expelled Mr Anderson.
Meanwhile, Dame Andrea Jenkyns, one of just two Tory MPS who have publicly called for Mr Sunak to go, urged her colleagues on the backbenches to “wake up”. “The Conservatives need to be conservative again,” she added.
RUMOURS of a top celeb endorsement for Reform were fuelled over the weekend by a photo of Richard Tice laughing with Kate Middleton and the Loch Ness Monster. Alas, it was a fake. The Princess had six fingers.
So speculation was running wild at Reform’s surprise announcement, Monday, 10.30am, in an oak-panelled room in Westminster. Will it be Lee Anderson? Or what about Lee Anderson? My money was on Lee Anderson. Tice teed up his mystery guest with a speech delivered between two pristine Union flags, and when he announced “I have found a champion of the Red Wall!”, the penny dropped.
Anderson entered to the flash of cameras and attempted his first smile since the birth of his children, evoking a rottweiler contemplating a wounded rabbit. Then he ascended the stage… and disappeared. Before the press conference began, the lectern had broken (of course). So it was replaced by a tall table that was positioned behind one of the flags, meaning when Lee read his speech, he was obscured by his own patriotism.
A flunky off camera slowly lowered the Union flag and withdrew it, giving the impression that the flag was conscious of its mistake and was trying to duck out of shot. “How embarrassing,” it whispered to a tricolour. “I shall never live it down.”
He suggested that he take his first question from “the people’s channel”, aka GB News, which also happens to be his employer. GB News seems to have become both the Conservatives’ U-boat and their lifeboat. First they sink the party, then they rescue its MPS with a second career on TV.
Well, what everybody wants to know is why Anderson was pro-tory five minutes ago and anti-tory now? The answer: geography. “I live in the real world,” he said, “a place called Ashfield. They are talking like me, not like you lot or the MPS in there.” He pointed north rather than south, towards Harrods (which might be appropriate). I’m done with the “mates at the tea party”, he said, “clinking their champagne glasses”. Tice made a note not to open the Krug at lunch.
As for the suggestion, from a female journalist, that he’d misled the lobby: “That’s just politics, darling” – the gender politics of c. 1976 – adding that “politicians are about as trustworthy as journalists with what they say and do”. He damned us, he damned himself. He is a candidate for “none of the above”, yet will be appearing on the ballot.
“I can’t stand up” to ask my question, another of my colleagues warned Anderson, “because I’m wearing a short skirt”. Finally, we have proof that the press can speak the language of common sense, too.