Former Conservative deputy leader and MP Lee Anderson has announced he has joined Richard Tice’s Reform Party after he was suspended by the Tories for remarks he made about the “Islamification” of London.
The MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire said he would not apologise for the comments he made on GB News in February which led to him losing the whip.
“I will start by saying I want my country back,” he told a Monday morning press conference in London.
“Over the last year or so I’ve had to do a lot of soul searching on my political journey.
“I don’t expect much in politics other than to be able to speak my mind.”
‘My Political Beliefs Have Never Changed’
The former Labour councillor has now been a member of three different parties, but said he has remained consistent in his views and it is the parties which have moved away from their traditional voter bases.
“My political beliefs have never changed at all,” he said.
Just weeks ago, Mr. Anderson said there was nothing that could induce him to join Reform, but said he had been shocked to lose the whip for the comments he made, claiming that “millions of people up and down the UK” share his concerns over mass and illegal immigration and other issues.
He denied that any money had changed hands to persuade him to join Reform, following a Sunday Times report from last November that claimed he had stated he had been offered “a lot of money” by “a political party that begins with an R” to join that party.
George Galloway MP, who won the Rochdale seat as an independent, recently claimed he was courted by Mr. Tice to join Reform and threatened to release a text to confirm this.
Mr. Anderson said: “It is no secret that I’ve been talking to my friends in Reform for a while. And Reform UK has offered me the chance to speak out in Parliament on behalf of millions of people up and down the country who feel that they’re not being listened to.”
An MP since 2019, Mr. Anderson worked as a coal miner and then for the Citizens Advice Bureau before serving as a Labour Party councillor in Ashfield from 2015.
He defected to the Conservatives in 2018 and served simultaneously as an MP and a councillor for the Nottinghamshire ward of Mansfield from 2019 to 2021, after he won his parliamentary seat in a fomer mining area.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appointed him deputy chairman of the Tories in February 2023 and he served in this role until January this year.
‘Immigration Is Making Us Poorer’
“We are allowing people to erase our history ... we are allowing people into our country who will never adapt and integrate,” he said.“We can see from the data, immigration is making us poorer. No question whatsoever.”
Mr. Anderson also criticised policies around net zero and gender ideology and said the “genuine concerns” of “tens of millions of people” are being dismissed as bigotry and phobia.
“We have to shape and influence and change the direction of this country of ours,” he said, adding there was still much to be proud of in Britain, pointing to the COVID-19 vaccines, which he claimed had saved “millions of lives.”
He said that Reform is polling particularly well in the so-called “red wall” seats of the north and Midlands, where he said it is crucial for the party to stand strong candidates in order to provide solid opposition to Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer, terming the expected Labour victory at the forthcoming election as “Starmergedden.”
Mr. Anderson was suspended by the Conservatives after he alleged that “Islamists” controlled London Mayor Sadiq Khan and Sir Keir, saying in a GB News discussion about an article penned by former Home Secretary Suella Braverman: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London, and they’ve got control of Starmer as well.”
Mr. Anderson later issued a statement in which he said his words “may have been clumsy but ... were borne out of sheer frustration at what is happening to our beautiful capital city.”
A growing number of Conservative MPs have announced they are standing down at the forthcoming general election, with some seeing Reform as a growing threat and the Tories polling particularly badly.
Reform placed third in two recent by-elections, although its candidate in the Rochdale contest—former Labour MP Simon Danczuk—did less well than the party had hoped, after the Labour candidate was forced to drop out over comments he had made about the Israel–Palestine conflict.
Mr. Tice has ruled out entering any electoral pact with the Conservatives after the election, which many predict will be in May, stressing that he thinks Reform is a threat to both main parties and has markedly different policies to the Tories and Labour.
He has vowed to stand candidates in every constituency, unlike in 2019 when his party—then the Brexit Party—stood down candidates to help then-Conservative leader Boris Johnson get his deal to leave the European Union over the line.
