Nottinghamshire MP Lee Anderson clashed with a local BBC radio presenter as an argument blew up, where he asked her 10 times if she’d ever told a lie. The outspoken MP for Ashfield, who has just been made deputy Conservative Party chairman, hit the headlines when an interview emerged where he called for the death penalty to return.
Mr Anderson had said that “nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed” to justify his position. Asked whether he would support the return of the death penalty, Mr Anderson told weekly magazine The Spectator: “Yes." He added: "Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed. You know that, don’t you? 100 per cent success rate.”
Appearing on BBC Radio Nottingham he was asked by radio presenter Verity Cowley about a video of him setting up a doorstep encounter during the 2019 election campaign. In one section the pre-recorded interview he was asked about an incident in the run-up to the 2019 general election.
Read more: Nottinghamshire MP Lee Anderson says he is in favour of death penalty
In 2019, Mr Anderson, while out with journalist Michael Crick, takes a phone call on the campaign trail. The MP returns to Crick to say the call related to a number of leaflets that had arrived at his house.
But a microphone picks up Mr Anderson telling a voter not to tell the film crew he is a friend when they knock on his door. “There is a worry by some that you might be a bit dishonest,” Cowley said.
Mr Anderson then asks Cowley if she has ever told a lie a number of times. She said: “I’ve never asked somebody to pretend to be something they’re not just to further my campaign.”
The presenter then says humans tell false truths to protect people. “So you’re a liar, so you’re dishonest,” Mr Anderson replies. “We’ve established you’re dishonest and you tell lies. Mr Anderson said that after the election video was released he was elected with an 8,000 majority showing his constituents backed him.
On the issue of the death penalty Mr Anderson argued that heinous crimes — such as the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby in 2013 by Islamist extremists Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale — where the perpetrators are clearly identifiable should be punished by execution.
Adebolajo was given a whole-life term and Adebowale was jailed for a minimum of 45 years for running over and stabbing the British Army soldier in south-east London in broad daylight. Mr Anderson told the magazine: “Now I’d be very careful on that one (the return of the death penalty) because you’ll get the certain groups saying: ‘You can never prove it’.
“Well, you can prove it if they have videoed it and are on camera – like the Lee Rigby killers. I mean: they should have gone, same week. I don’t want to pay for these people.”
On the issue of preventing small boats from crossing the Channel — one of the Prime Minister’s top five priorities — Mr Anderson said migrants arriving unlawfully in Britain should be returned the “same day” to where they came from.
He said that during a visit to Calais last month he met migrants referring to Britain as “El Dorado”. “They are seeing a country where the streets are paved with gold – where, once you land, they are not in that manky little f****** scruffy tent,” Mr Anderson said.
“They are going to be in a four-star hotel. And they know that Serco is buying up houses everywhere, to put them in for the next five years. Why wouldn’t you come?” Asked for his solution, he replied: “I’d send them straight back the same day.
“I’d put them on a Royal Navy frigate or whatever and sail it to Calais, have a stand-off. And they’d just stop coming.”
The Ashfield MP also made headlines last year for saying people needed to learn how to cook and budget “properly”, rather than use food banks. He argued there was “not this massive use for food banks in this country”, and those who knew how to cook and budget could make meals for 30p a day.
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