New ‘Red Wall’ Tory MP who faces FIVE disciplinary charges
ONE of the new breed of Tory MPs who smashed through Labour’s ‘Red Wall’ at the Election faces an extraordinary probe over five separate misconduct allegations.
Lee Anderson could be stripped of the whip by party bosses just two months after he entered the Commons for the first time.
A confidential dossier held at Tory HQ, and seen by The Mail on Sunday, lists the charge sheet against Mr Anderson as:
• Posting a ‘vulgar’ Facebook post where he referred to a woman’s breasts as ‘knockers’;
• Faking an Election campaign encounter to fool television viewers that he had persuaded a Labour swing voter to back the Tories;
• Claiming in a pre-election video that nuisance tenants should ‘evicted, made to live in tents in the middle of a field and be forced to get up at 6am to pick potatoes’;
• Suggesting women could struggle to be councillors because of childcare responsibilities;
• Actively taking part in an ‘ antisemitic’ internet discussion about billionaire George Soros.
The length of the complaints list against Mr Anderson, who defected from Labour to the Tories in 2018, is adding to party bosses’ concern at the calibre of some of its 100plus new MPs.
Mr Anderson’s victory in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, was just one of the Tory gains in Labour’s heartland that handed Boris Johnson his 80-strong majority.
But during the campaign, Mr Anderson was already running into trouble over several reported incidents, now collated into the confidential disciplinary dossier. That document stresses that no formal allegations have yet been made but asks for Mr Anderson’s comments on the allegations, which include a Facebook post from July 2018.
It showed a photograph of him looking at the chest of a local resident wearing a vest top with the caption: ‘ Out with some great knockers tonight in Skegby.’
The Tory dossier states: ‘It is obvious from this double entendre that you are referring to the breasts of the woman in the photograph.’
The report also asks the MP to comment on reports that he faked with a friend a canvassing encounter filmed by Channel 4. It summarises the claim as: ‘You visited that friend’s home with a Channel 4 journalist… with the intention of appearing to show how you were able to persuade that person to vote Conservative when in fact he was always going to do so. The whole thing was a sham, intended by you and your friend to deceive both the journalist and the voting public.’
Mr Anderson is further challenged over his suggested punishment for anti-social tenants. The dossier notes sternly that it amounts to ‘degrading’ hard labour.
And he is accused of being a member of Facebook group ‘Ashfield Back Boris’ which, says the dossier, ‘is alleged to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories’.
Mr Anderson was unavailable for comment but a friend said: ‘Allegations that Lee took part in an antisemitic Facebook thread about Soros or said woman can’t be councillors is rubbish. All the other stuff has been in the public domain and dealt with, and i s now being dragged up as dirty tricks.’