Nobody paid me to join Reform UK, says Notts defector Lee Anderson
TORIES MADE NO EFFORT TO PREVENT HIM LEAVING, CLAIMS MP
FORMER Conservative deputy chairman Lee Anderson said he is no mercenary as he denied being paid to switch allegiances to Reform UK.
Mr Anderson also told GB News that the Conservative Party had not contacted him ahead of being unveiled as Reform’s first MP.
The MP for Ashfield had been forced to sit as an independent after being stripped of the Tory whip last month for suggesting London Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan was controlled by Islamist extremists.
He refused to apologise for the remarks that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak branded “wrong”.
On Monday during an appearance on GB News – which pays him £100,000 a year for hosting a show on top of his £86,584 pay as an MP – Mr Anderson denied any money exchanged hands before his defection.
“No, absolutely not. One hundred percent, don’t be so ridiculous… I’m not a mercenary. I’ve had no money.”
Some Tories see Reform UK as a potential general election threat with signs of growing support for the party as it polls at around 10 percent of national voting intention.
Brexiteer Nigel Farage is the honorary president of the party, which seeks to attract disillusioned Conservatives, mainly over immigration and net zero.
Reform finished in third place in two recent by-elections, although its candidate in the Rochdale contest – former Labour MP Simon Danczuk – had a poor showing.
Party leader Richard Tice has ruled out standing aside to avoid splitting the Leave vote in some seats, as the party did under its Brexit Party name in 2019.
Mr Anderson, seen as the voice of the so-called red wall
– the traditional Labour areas that voted for Boris Johnson in 2019 – said there had been no last-ditch efforts by the Tories to prevent his defection.
“The news broke this morning on social media, my phone was pinging from about six o’clock this morning.
I’ve had no contact from the party at all. “I’d have thought, at that stage, maybe someone would have given me a call to say, ‘hold on, Lee, what you doing? Have a think about it,’ nobody.”
Former business secretary Sir Jacob Rees-mogg said that, while he believed the Tories erred in suspending Mr Anderson, it was a “mistake” for him to join Reform because “divided wings of politics lose”. “We know Reform won’t win the election, but they can… make it harder for the Conservatives,” he told GB News. “That is why I think Lee made a mistake in going.
“I think he should have stayed within the Conservative Party to bolster the forces arguing for what he believes in.”
In the Daily Telegraph, Tory MPS Miriam Cates and Danny Kruger, leaders of the right-wing New Conservatives faction, said his decision to join a rival made a “substantial Labour majority significantly more likely in this year’s general election”.
The Tories are considerably behind Sir Keir Starmer’s party, with some polls putting Labour 20 points ahead.
Mr Anderson – who previously represented Labour as a councillor before jumping ship to the Tories in 2018 – has accused the Conservatives of stifling “free speech”.