Early evening summary
The Conservative party’s biggest donor told colleagues that looking at Diane Abbott makes you “want to hate all black women” and said the MP “should be shot”, the Guardian can reveal. Commenting on the revelations, Anneliese Dodds, the Labour party chair, said:
These comments are reprehensible.
Frank Hester is the Conservative Party’s biggest ever donor, as well as a personal donor to the prime minster, it is therefore vital that Rishi Sunak and the Tories return his donations, in full without delay.
Rishi Sunak has claimed that “words matter”, and he must know that holding on to that money would suggest the Conservatives condone these disturbing comments. Sunak must return every penny.
Cleverly welcomes deal signed at global fraud summit in London as 'massive step forward'
All G7 countries, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea, have signed a new agreement to tackle international fraud. The deal was signed at a global fraud summit hosted by the home secretary, James Cleverly. The Home Office said in a news release:
Under this framework, signatories have pledged to enhance law enforcement cooperation, improve victim support and bolster intelligence sharing.
Nations have also set out a clear requirement for collaboration with the private sector to prevent fraud ..
The communiqué recognises the impact of fraud is devastating and universal across the world, even if specific crime types may vary in different regions.
It paves the way for closer working practices between international law enforcement agencies.
Intelligence sharing between law enforcement agencies will be ramped up, with operational resources also enhanced. This will help ensure a comprehensive threat picture is maintained, and that action is taken against criminals operating across borders.
And Cleverly said:
We’ve been clear that the global community needs to unite to fight fraud head on and this communique is a massive step forward.
The United Kingdom and our friends at this summit possess the finest law enforcement agencies in the world.
We have already reduced fraud by 13% in England and Wales. New action from the international community will help reduce that even further.
Keir Starmer has said that Lee Anderson’s defection to Reform UK shows that the Conservative party has given up on governing. He told Sky News:
This is not just about Lee Anderson. It’s about 14 years of failure.
Another day, another story about Tory division. And, you know, I think the bigger picture here is now you’ve got a government that is so distracted, it’s divided, it’s arguing amongst itself.
Meanwhile, there’s no proper governing going on. There are people really struggling, there are schools that need attention. And all we’re getting is more and more division within the Tory party.
John Healey, Labour’s defence spokesperson, used an urgent question in the Commons this afternoon to press the Conservatives over defence spending - although the shadow minister was careful not to make any financial commitments of his own.
Conservative papers, led by the Telegraph and the Mail, have been running a campaign to increase defence spending from the existing 2.1% of GDP to 2.5% or even 3%. But no new extra money for defence was promised in last week’s budget.
Healey said:
[There was] nothing new for Ukraine. Nothing for Gaza or the UK operations in the Middle East and worse, both the Treasury and the House of Commons library confirmed the defence budget will be cut £2.5bn in cash terms in this next financial year.
James Cartlidge, the defence procurement minister, replying on behalf of the government, sought to hit back. Replying to Healey, the minister said: “He hasn’t even committed to matching our current spending on defence let alone 2.5%” - a target GDP level for the Conservatives, whenever the financial situation allows.
The budget red book showed that total defence spending, revenue and capital, would total £54.2bn this year and drop to £51.7bn in 2024/5, reflecting Healey’s calculations, although Cartlidge said the MoD would in fact spend more than that next year, at £55.6bn.
Lifting defence spending by half a percentage point of GDP would imply an increase of around £13bn in real terms, and the money would almost certainly have to come from other public spending, making for difficult choices in the next parliament if either party choses to go to the 2.5% level.
Gillian Keegan insists government on course to deliver extra free childcare places on offer from April
Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, has claimed all parents will be able to access childcare under the government’s expanded offer, amid warnings many will miss out, PA Media reports. PA says:
Keegan told MPs that government projections show more than 150,000 new funded places will be secured by early April.
She replied “absolutely” when challenged by Labour to commit to guaranteeing that all parents in England will be able to access places.
Chancellor Jeremy Hunt last year announced that eligible families of children as young as nine months will be able to claim 30 hours of free childcare a week by 2025.
As part of a staggered rollout of the policy, working parents of two-year-olds will be able to access 15 hours of free childcare from April. This will be extended to working parents of all children older than nine months from September.
Concerns have been repeatedly raised that many childcare providers in England will struggle to meet increased demand for funded places under the Government’s offer.
Speaking at education questions, Keegan told the Commons: “We’re delivering the largest ever expansion of childcare in England’s history, which begins rolling out in just three weeks’ time from April 1.
“We’ve done this before, when we more than doubled the entitlements of the last Labour government, and I’m delighted to update the House that our latest projections show more than 150,000 new funded places will be secured by early April.
For Labour, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “Neither the secretary of state nor any Treasury minister met with representatives of the early years sector in the months before last year’s budget announcement on childcare.
“Now with just three weeks to go parents, providers and even their own civil servants are sounding the alarm. Over seven in 10 providers say they’re not going to offer additional places, a quarter say they’re likely to close within a year. So will the secretary of state now guarantee that all parents will be able to access the childcare places that she promised?”
Keegan replied: “Absolutely, and I set out in my topical statement, and we’re working with every local authority to ensure the places are available.”
Boris Johnson was 'scatty, incoherent and rambling' in key Covid meetings, inquiry told
Vaughan Gething, the Welsh health minister during the pandemic, considered Boris Johnson’s handling of key Covid meetings as “scatty, incoherent and rambling”, the inquiry has heard.
Gething made the comment in his written statement to the inquiry, and during the session today (see 4.26pm) Tom Poole, lead counsel for the inquiry, read out an extract. He told Gething:
When Matt Hancock chaired meetings of Cobra there was administrative efficiency and it was a matter of regret that the same could not be said for the meetings chaired by Mr Johnson, who you describe as ‘scatty, incoherent and rambling’.
Gething told the hearing that “the identity [of the chair] really does matter”.
Covid bereaved accuse former Welsh health minister of incompetence
Bereaved families who lost loved ones to Covid have accused the former Welsh health minister, Vaughan Gething, of incompetence and arrogance after he revealed that all his WhatsApp messages from the time had been lost, Steven Morris reports.
The Conservative MP Jackie Doyle-Price has described Lee Anderson as a “big girl’s blouse” because he did not have the courage to call Rishi Sunak to say he was defecting.
Course he didn’t inform the Prime Minister. Big girls blouse https://t.co/YiPAIHXizC
— Jackie Doyle-Price MP (@JackieDP) March 11, 2024
Updated
How Anderson's defection means record 13 parties now represented in House of Commons
A reader asks:
Now that both Reform UK and Worker’s Party have MPs, is 13 the most parties represented in Parliament at one time?
Yes, if we are talking about “proper” parties. Here is the updated “state of the parties” page from the Commons’s website.
David Boothroyd, who wrote what may be the best guide to British political parties, says the previous peak was at the end of the 2010-15 parliament, when there were 12 parties in the Commons. George Galloway was also in the Commons then, representing the Respect party, not the Workers party, and Ukip, a predecessor party to Reform UK, was also represented. The new voice this time is Alba, the small Scottish nationalist party set up by Alex Salmond after he left the SNP.
A reader points out that in the 1945 general election people were elected to the Commons under 15 separate headings, but several of these were independents loosely aligned to one of the bigger parties.
Going back further in time, you could probably find a period when there might have been more than 13 factions sitting in the Commons, if you were to categorise them in sufficient detail. But that would have been before the emergence of political parties in the nineteenth century.
Britain is often described as having a two-party system. But Nicolai von Ondarza, a researcher at SWP, a German foreign policy thinktank, points out that Britain now has almost as many parties in its first-past-the-post parliament as the Netherlands has in its PR one.
The first past the post electoral system is designed to concentrate parliament on very few major parties. Although still concentrated, the UK House of Commons now hosts 13 parties, almost as much as the Netherlands at 15 parties. https://t.co/AiGF5Y19Zp
— Nicolai von Ondarza (@NvOndarza) March 11, 2024
Brown backs thinktanks's call for cabinet secretary to give up running civil service, but Major disagrees
Although Sir John Major and Gordon Brown agreed at the IfG event in expressing doubts about its plan for an executive, inner cabinet to run the government (see 3.13pm), they disagreed on another of the thinktank’s recommendations.
The IfG report says the role of cabinet secretary and head of the civil service should be separate, and filled by two different people. This has happened in the past, but it is more common for the two jobs to be combined, as they are now under Simon Case.
Major said he thought combining the jobs made sense. He said:
I’m dubious about splitting the roles of cabinet secretary and head of the civil service … The civil service is the delivery of government, the engine of the whole machine. Its work is absolutely crucial. If a civil service fails, government fails.
For those reasons and others, I have no time to include, I believe its head should be the most senior civil servant, the only one with daily and direct access to the prime minister and that is the cabinet secretary.
But Brown disagreed. He said:
While it’s a very tricky distinction between policy initiation and policy implementation, I think it is too much to expect that the person who is the secretary of the cabinet is also going to be head of the civil service effectively. I remember Jeremy Heywood [a former cabinet secretary] saying that this was his fifth priority, to head the civil service, because there were four priorities before that.
So I can see the logic of a Civil Service Act which has as its basis a requirements on the head of the civil service to be responsible for the management of the civil service and to be accountable, yearly reporting to parliament for that accountability.
And I believe that that is a distinction between the cabinet secretary responsible for the political process of developing and then getting agreement on policy, and the administration of it with nearly 500,000 civil servants, is something that can be dealt with in a far better way than we’re doing at the moment.
Gordon Brown and John Major express doubts about thinktank's plan for inner cabinet to run government
As Larry Elliott reports, Gordon Brown used his speech at the Institute for Government event (see 2.34pm) to say Britain should be put on an economic “war footing” to promote growth. He called for the creation of a National Economic Council, jointly chaired by the prime minister and chancellor with a mission to deliver annual growth of 3%. (Brown himself did something very similar when he was PM in 2008.) Larry’s story is here.
Brown told the IfG:
We are in a make-or-break decade for our economy.
Our growth levels are half what they were in the last two or three decades. Our productivity levels are now lower. The growth rate is now lower than it was at any time. Academics tell me since the industrial revolution, investment in this country is far lower as a percentage of national income from almost all our major competitors.
The regional economic inequalities in our country are now so serious that they demand urgent action. And of course as a result of that, standards of living for people in this country are continuing to fall.
There has got to be a turnaround strategy. We cannot govern in the way we have been doing if we are going to make this a decade when we can see an economic recovery …
We need to think with almost military precision about how we can put our economy on a war footing so that we are in a position to solve the problems I’ve just identified.
In his speech Brown also referred to a report in today’s Times saying that Keir Starmer wants to adopt the IfG’s proposal for the creation an executive cabinet committee. The IfG said this was needed because the full cabinet is too big to function as a decision making body. In his story Oliver Wright said:
Starmer is looking at creating a powerful new executive cabinet that would make key decisions in advance of them being presented to the cabinet, which is seen as too unwieldy to have proper policy debates.
The so-called gang of four would include Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, Angela Rayner and Pat McFadden, who is set to become one of the most important figures in a future Labour government as the prime minister’s “enforcer”.
In his speech Brown said that he thought that this proposal would be “very difficult” and might not work. He also joked that previous attempts at a “quadrumvirate” had not worked very well.
King Herod was part of a quadrumvirate where the four of them governed the Romand empire, and you can take it right through to recent times and the Gang of Four, which if I remember right has not survived to tell much of the tale that now.
He said the inner cabinet proposal “may need some further work”, and he said cabinet ministers outside the inner circle would not welcome the plan.
In his speech Major also expressed doubts about this idea. (See 2.34pm.)
Updated
The FT’s chief political commentator, Robert Shrimsley, thinks Lee Anderson ought to resign and trigger a byelection because he would probably win.
Think Lee Anderson is making a mistake not forcing a by-election. He'd probably win and give a big boost to Reform. In fact he prob has more chance of holding seat at general if he does.
— robert shrimsley (@robertshrimsley) March 11, 2024
Think Lee Anderson is making a mistake not forcing a by-election. He’d probably win and give a big boost to Reform. In fact he prob has more chance of holding seat at general if he does.
Updated
John Major concedes Tories' conduct in office has not been 'conducive to high morale or good government'
The Institute for Government thinktank has published a report today setting out plans to reform how the centre of government works. It says the current No 10/Cabinet Office machinery is “not equipped to meet the challenges of the rest of the 21st century” and it proposes:
No 10 and the Cabinet Office should not continue in their current form, and should instead be restructured into a new Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and a separate Department for the Civil Service, housed in a modernised Downing Street and 70 Whitehall complex. It also calls for the appointment of a new first secretary of state to drive the government’s priorities, the creation of an executive cabinet committee made of a small number of key ministers, for splitting up of the cabinet secretary’s role and responsibilities, and reiterates the IfG’s call for a new civil service statute.
The former prime ministers Sir John Major and Gordon Brown both spoke at the launch, and they both endorsed much of what was in it.
In his speech Major conceded that his own party did not have a good record at governance. He said:
Let me be clear about this: Three prime ministers in one parliament, with a few malcontents seeking a fourth, does not help the perception of the centre of government.
Nor does a supreme court ruling that the government has broken the law.
Nor is it a good optic when ministers indulge in public arguments, openly blame or, in one or two occasions, insult their civil servants. Or when they favour the advice of often inexperienced political advisers over that of civil servants with years of specialist experience and knowledge. Or when they sack senior civil servants who offer candid advice, which simply did not suit the government’s thinking.
None of that conduct is conducive to high morale or good government. Politics needs changes to create and project a far more effective and trusted system.
Major also said that, although he agreed the cabinet has become “too large and cumbersome”, he thought there were “practical drawbacks to a formal inner cabinet” proposed by the IfG saying it would alienate those who are excluded. He went on:
The commission’s objective of a smaller decision-making body to advise cabinet could be achieved by appointing an informal cabinet sub-committee of appropriate ministers, or ad hoc meetings chaired by the prime minister.
A reader asks:
What is the latest date that parliament can be dissolved prior to a GE on May 2nd?
For an election on Thursday 2 May, parliament would have to dissolve on Tuesday 26 March – two weeks tomorrow. In practice, the election would have to be called a few days beforehand, because normally a few days are allowed for remaining non-controversial bits of legislation to clear parliament.
All the possible dissolution and election dates this year are in this Commons library briefing paper.
After the budget the consensus view at Westminster was that a May election, which was already highly unlikely, had become even more unlikely. But Cat Neilan from Tortoise has spoken to someone who thinks the Lee Anderson defection tips the balance back towards May a tiny bit.
Could Lee Anderson's defection tip the balance on a May election?
— Cat Neilan (@CatNeilan) March 11, 2024
One Tory MP says it "ramps up" the possibility, adding: "I don't think anyone really thinks things will improve under current regime."
Another says No 10 has been "not so much sounding out as muttering darkly"
Could Lee Anderson’s defection tip the balance on a May election?
One Tory MP says it “ramps up” the possibility, adding: “I don’t think anyone really thinks things will improve under current regime.”
Another says No 10 has been “not so much sounding out as muttering darkly”
But, ever the broad church, another Tory MP says: “I think it just pushed election back until Jan 25.” And another Tory source says it would be “suicide” to go early....
On Thursday last week, after giving an ambiguous answer earlier in the day, Rishi Sunak said this about election timing in an interview.
I was very clear about this at the beginning of the year about my working assumption for the election being in the second half of the year – nothing has changed since then.
Conservative MPs are on alert for a possible defection from their ranks, with northern backbenchers from ‘red wall’ seats regarded as the most likely.
One senior MP told the Guardian:
I don’t think this is a moment we will forget about in a hurry.
I think Lee Anderson was probably the most recognisable of the red wall intake of MPs at the last general election. He therefore carries a certain amount of weight, political weight, and I think it is pretty serious.
Another said they had “one or two” of their colleagues who could well decide to abandon the Tories for Reform UK.
I think that the red wall is pretty demoralised at the moment, not least because of what Lee has just done and I think that there will be some people from the same part of the country who might well decide to go.
Tory MPs said that Anderson’s departure did not come as surprise and many had been waiting for it since news emerged that he had held talks with Reform UK leader Richard Tice at a hotel.
New Conservatives say Anderson's defection shows Tories can no longer pretend 'plan is working'
The New Conservatives, a group of rightwing, socially conservative MPs pushing for lower immigration and tax cuts, has put out a statement saying Lee Anderson’s defection confirms that red wall Tory voters have been let down.
In posts on X, the group, which is co-chaired by Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, also says the party can no longer claim that “the plan is working” – despite this being the core message being used by No 10 and CCHQ in Tory campaigning at the moment.
We regret Lee's decision. Supporting Reform makes a less conservative Britain more likely. A Labour government would raise taxes, increase immigration, undo Brexit and divide our society. (2/7)
— The New Conservatives (@thenewcons) March 11, 2024
We regret Lee’s decision. Supporting Reform makes a less conservative Britain more likely. A Labour government would raise taxes, increase immigration, undo Brexit and divide our society. (2/7)
But the responsibility for Lee’s defection sits with the Conservative Party. We have failed to hold together the coalition of voters who gave us an 80 seat majority in 2019. Those voters - in our traditional heartlands and in the Red Wall seats like Ashfield - backed us because we offered an optimistic, patriotic, no-nonsense Conservatism. They voted for lower immigration, for a better NHS, for a rebalanced economy, and for pride in our country. (3/7)
Our poll numbers show what the public think of our record since 2019. We cannot pretend any longer that ‘the plan is working’. We need to change course urgently. A change of course does not mean fracturing our Parliamentary Party. (4/7)
We were all elected on the promises of 2019. We can hold together AND win back our disenchanted voters - but only if we recommit to serve the whole country, including the millions who feel alienated by mainstream politics and who put their trust in us because we promised change. (5/7)
That means commitments on crime, immigration, tax, skills, welfare, housing, defence and the NHS that go far beyond what we are currently offering. The New Conservatives have developed proposals in some of these areas and we are working on others for publication shortly. (6/7)
We urge our colleagues to work with us to develop a bold new offer, consistent with the spirit of 2019, that will convince our lost voters that we present a genuine alternative to Labour and the best hope for Britain. (7/7)
Updated
Lee Anderson's defection to Reform UK press conference - summary and analysis
The last time Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, held a press conference at Westminster, it was a bit of a flop because journalists were expecting Nigel Farage, the party’s honorary president, and he was a no-show. This time Tice did have a biggish personality with him, and a news story. According to the Guardian’s poll tracker, support for Reform UK have gone from 9% at the start of the year to 11%. Today’s announcement confirms the party has some momentum behind it, and it may provide a futher boost. But support at this level is way behind what Ukip was getting at the height of its popularity, and it almost certainly would not be enough for the party to win any seats at the next election.
Apart from the fact that Reform UK now has an MP, here are other things we learned.
Tice said he expected other Tory MPs to defect to his party. He said:
I will be surprised if there are no more other MPs from other parties who don’t join Reform before the general election.
Tice accepted this forecast would not apply to an election in May, but very few people at Westminster now expect it that early. There are claims that up to nine Tory MPs are in talks to join the party. (See 10.24am.) Defections on this scale would be a huge blow to Rishi Sunak, but there is a long history of smaller parties making claims about potential defections that never actually happen.
Lee Anderson claimed he was shocked when he lost the party whip for claiming that Sadiq Khan was under the control of Islamists and insisted that he was entitled to say what he did – even though at the time he partially rowed back from what he had said. Today he was unrepentant. He said:
When I find myself suspended for speaking my mind, and by the way speaking up on behalf of millions of people up and down the country who agree with me, that for me is unpalatable. It’s a shocker, if I’m honest.
I cannot be a part of an organisation which stifles free speech, and many of my colleagues in that place, in the Conservative party, do back back me on this privately.
Yet, after he lost the whip over his comments, Anderson put out a statement saying he accepted No 10 had no option but to do this. Anderson later said that his words had been “clumsy”, and he even wrote an article for the Daily Express accepting his use of the word “Islamist” had been problematic. Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, commended what he said in that article, telling MPs it represented Anderson’s more measured, “genuine view”. Today Anderson implied that it didn’t, and that he had no regrets about his original outburst.
Anderson said that he was joining Reform UK because he wants “my country back”. This will be seen by many as a racist dog whistle. 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.
People will say that I’ve took a gamble. And I’m prepared to gamble on myself, as I know from my mailbag how many people in this country support Reform UK and what they have to say. And like millions of people up and down the country, all I want is my country back.
Tice confirmed that immigration, “gender ideology” and net zero would be key election themes for Reform UK. (See 10.39am.) On migration, he claimed that mass immigration was making the country poorer – even though mainstream economists generally say the opposite.
Tice claimed that the conduct of people on the pro-Palestinian marches was creating “genuine fear” amongst people in the Jewish community and he cited this as further evidence that Britiain was “broken”. He even claimed that many Jewish people were “thinking about leaving London to go back to Israel”. Mike Katz, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, described his comments at antisemitic and wrong.
"Many [British Jews] are thinking about leaving London to go back to Israel?"
— Mike Katz (@mikekatz) March 11, 2024
No @TiceRichard. Height of ignorance (& casually antisemitism); most British Jews were born here and like living here.
Stop using Jews as a political football. Get yourself educated and do one.
“Many [British Jews] are thinking about leaving London to go back to Israel?”
No @TiceRichard. Height of ignorance (& casually antisemitism); most British Jews were born here and like living here.
Stop using Jews as a political football. Get yourself educated and do one.
To be clear, in his scripted remarks Reform leader @TiceRichard, in his scripted remarks, said that Jews here are thinking of *going back* [my emphasis] to Israel.
Ignorant antisemitism, when he purports to support Jews who worry about growing antisemitism. We see you.
Anderson defended his decision not to resign and trigger a byelection – even though in the past he backed a bill that said a byelection should happen if an MP defected to another party, as he has done. This is from the Mirror’s Ashley Cowburn.
Lee Anderson backed this 2020 bill to force a recall petition in seats where an MP changes political party. pic.twitter.com/30oDyjbgzE
— Ashley Cowburn (@ashcowburn) March 11, 2024
Asked why he was not willing to trigger a byelection, Anderson said that it would be reckless to hold a byelection when there could be a byelection in May. He also said a byelection would be expensive.
Anderson claimed he would have defected even if he had not lost the Tory whip. He said:
My parents have been saying to me for weeks now, you cannot win, we can’t vote for you being in the Conservative party.
If my parents are saying that, what chance have I got?
Updated
Lee Anderson has represented the Nottinghamshire seat of Ashfield as a Conservative MP since 2019, having previously served as a Labour councillor on Ashfield district council.
Jason Zadrozny, the leader of the council who is vying for Anderson’s seat as an independent candidate at the next election (see 12pm), described his defection as the “worst kept secret in Ashfield”. Zadrozny said:
Ashfield people do not want the continuing soap opera of Lee Anderson. The fact that he is defecting to another ramshackle, right-wing political party is the worst kept secret in Ashfield.
People in Ashfield just want an MP to speak up for their concerns and deliver results for them. Living standards in Ashfield have plummeted since Anderson became the MP and these shenanigans do not help a single struggling family here. If Lee Anderson truly cared about local people, then today’s announcement would have been his resignation.
Owen Winter from the Economist points out that, when Lee Anderson seeks reelection as a Reform UK candidate in Ashfield, he will be up against not just the main parties, but also Jason Zadrozny, a local independent who came second last time. At the recent Rochdale byelection another independent came second, behind George Galloway.
Ashfield is a very interesting constituency. Zadrozny is running again, having swept the council elections last year. Labour and Reform will both be targeting it. Wonder if Conservatives could slip to fourth pic.twitter.com/i6qN1WIgLM
— Owen Winter (@OwenWntr) March 11, 2024
Ashfield is a very interesting constituency. Zadrozny is running again, having swept the council elections last year. Labour and Reform will both be targeting it. Wonder if Conservatives could slip to fourth
Labour says Lee Anderson's defection to Reform UK shows Tory party 'too extreme to be led'
Labour says the defection of Lee Anderson shows that Rishi Sunak’s judgment is flawed and that the Conservative party is “too extreme to be led”. This is from Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator.
While the Conservatives are falling apart, Labour is focussed on turning the page on 14 year of Tory failure.
What does it say about Rishi Sunak’s judgement that he promoted Lee Anderson in the first place?
The truth is that the prime minister is too weak to lead a party too extreme to be led, and if the Tories got another five years it would all just get worse.
Updated
In his response to one of the questions at the press conference, Lee Anderson said that a lot of the current Tory MPs won’t be in the Commons in a year’s time. I misheard what he originally said, and have updated and corrected the post at 10.59am. You may need to refresh the page to get the update to appear.
Hope not Hate, which campaigns against racism and fascism, has said that Lee Anderson’s defection to Reform UK is an indictment of Richard Tice’s party. Its director of campaigns Georgie Laming said:
Lee Anderson is one of the most extreme and divisive MPs in Parliament. He’s said immigrants should ‘fuck off back to France’ and made Islamophobic comments about Sadiq Khan.
Reform UK is a populist right-wing party that uses extreme anti-immigration rhetoric, stokes fear about minority communities and pushes climate change scepticism.
Joining Reform UK tells us all we need to know about Anderson and his new party.
Updated
Two months ago the Conservative party posted a video message on X showing Rishi Sunak and Lee Anderson banging on together about how awful it was that Bristol University no longer plays the national anthem at graduation ceremonies. Anderson was deputy Tory chair at the time, having been appointed in February last year in a surprise move by Sunak that designed to show voters that he was comfortable with the sort of GB News, reactionary populism represented by Anderson.
Great Britain.
— Lee Anderson MP (@LeeAndersonMP_) January 12, 2024
Is a gift to the world 🇬🇧🇬🇧 https://t.co/m59JoaJZUS
Sunak has now joined the long list of Conservative leaders with mainstream inclinations who have learned that trying to accommodate rightwingers tends not to work. Anderson’s defection would have been a story in any circumstances, but is a bigger event than it otherwise would have been because he joins Reform UK as a former Tory deputy chair.
Tories say they regret Anderson's defection, but that voting Reform UK will only help Labour
Commenting on Lee Anderson’s defection, a Conservative party spokesperson said:
Lee himself said he fully accepted that the chief whip had no option but to suspend the whip in these circumstances. We regret he’s made this decision. Voting for Reform can’t deliver anything apart from a Keir Starmer-led Labour government that would take us back to square one - which means higher taxes, higher energy costs, no action on channel crossings, and uncontrolled immigration.
Updated
Q: What was the turning point for you?
Anderson says he has done a lot of soul searching. When he had the whip withdrawn for speaking his mind, and saying many people agreed with him, that was “a shocker”, he says. And he claims many Tory MPs agree with him.
And that is the end of the press conference.
Q: Has Anderson been offered money to defect?
No money has been offered, says Anderson.
Q: What is your message to colleagues?
Anderson say it is a sad day leaving his colleagues.
Tice says Reform UK will be working to get Anderson re-elected.
UPDATE: This post originally reported Anderson as saying that in a year’s time a lot of Tory MPs would be sitting with him (ie, in Reform), but in fact he said a lot of Tory MPs would not there then (ie, not in the Commons). He said:
Yes, and I feel a little bit bruised as well because I sit with my colleagues on a daily basis looking at the opposition benches, and, quite frankly apart from maybe some of the DUPs, there’s nothing I’ve got in common with anybody over there.
So I’ve got to go and sit with them, I’ll probably be sat with George Galloway who I completely oppose. But I respect his right to be there, he was democratically elected.
I’ve got a lot of friends that sit on the benches with me, who have shown me a hell of a lot of support by private messages and phone calls and stuff like that, and the odd text and WhatsApp message.
So I’ll be sad to leave them, but if I’m honest, unfortunately, a lot of my colleagues won’t be there in a year’s time.
Updated
Tice says when he was growing up people were taught they could trust the government, the police and the Post Office.
But now collapse in all three has collapsed, he says.
He says if an election is called for May, Reform UK are ready.
Tice says all extremism is bad, but the most frightening extremism on the streets now is coming from people who are putting the Jewish community in fear, he suggests.
Anderson says he agrees with most of what Rishi Sunak said in his speech in Downing Street.
But people want action, he says.
He says he does not feel safe outside parliament; sometimes he has to use a different exit from the building.
He says he recalls the miners’ strike. At the time the police ensured working miners could still go to work.
He says he blames Sadiq Khan for the problems in London. Politicians keep saying things are unacceptable. But action is needed.
Tice says at the weekend someone was arrested for holding a placard saying Hamas are a terrorist group – even though that is government policy.
The Met police said at the weekend that this was not true.
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) March 9, 2024
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Tice says he will be 'surprised' if Reform UK does not get more Tory MPs joining before election
Richard Tice claims he will “surprised” if Reform UK does not get more Tory MP joining before the general election (although he accepts that is unlikely if the election is called this month, for a poll in May).
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Q: Why won’t you call a byelection?
Anderson and Richard Tice say the general election will be taking place soon, so there is no need.
Q: What is your answer to Tory colleagues who say that you have let them down?
“Country, constituency, then party,” says Anderson.
Beth Rigby from Sky News, who asked the question, pushes for a proper answer. But Anderson says that is all he is saying.
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Q: What has changed since you ruled out joining Reform UK earlier this year?
Anderson says the election of George Galloway to parliament made him think a fight back was needed.
Lee Anderson says he wants to get 'my country back' as he explains defection to Reform UK
Anderson is speaking now.
He claims he does not know some of the long words that other MPs know.
And this has led to his views being labelled controversial, he claims.
He goes on:
But my opinions are not controversial. There are opinions which is shared by millions of people up and down.
It is not controversial, to be concerned about illegal immigration.
And it is not controversial to be concerned about the Metropolitan police and the London mayor failing on hate marches, he says, or wanting to fight back against culture wars.
He says he wants to get his country back.
All I want is my country back. This may sound offensive to the liberal elite, but it’s not offensive to my friends, my family, my constituents and some of my donors.
And he says his parents, who are both nearly 80, said they would not vote for him unless he joined Reform UK. He says he must not let them down.
Tice confirms that Lee Anderson has defected to Reform UK
Tice claims people’s concerns and anxieties have turned to anger and fury.
Britain is broken, he claims. “And we all know who broke it.”
He claims the Tories have imposed on the country mass migration, which he claims is making the country poorer.
And he claims the pro-Palestinian marches are creating fear for the Jewish community. This is a terrible indictment of the police and the government, he says.
And people are “horrified” that gender ideology is infecting schools, he claims.
And people are concerned about the cost of net zero, he claims.
He claims that people who raise these issues are dismissed as bigots. Reform UK represents these people, he says.
He claims the Westminster establishment has never been more out of touch. And he says that is why Reform UK is going up in the polls. In one recent poll they were only five points behind the Tories, he claims.
He says at this election in red wall seats Reform UK want to replace the Tories as the main alternative to Labour.
And he says he has a red wall champion – Lee Anderson.
UPDATE: Tice said:
We need a champion, of course, of the red wall, someone who completely understands it, who is trusted by voters to tell it as it is, no nonsense, no waffle, clear, basic, common sense.
And I’m delighted to announce that I have found that champion of the red wall for reform UK.
He’s also coincidentally going to be Reform UK’s first member of parliament’s in the House of Commons.
He is of course a person of great integrity, no nonsense, and is the member of parliament in the county of Nottinghamshire for Ashfield.
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Reform UK holds press conference
Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, is speaking at his press conference.
He says the chancellor said last week the plan was working.
But no one told him the country is in recession, and that the recession per person is the longest since records began 70 years ago, he says.
From Steven Swinford from the Times
Lee Anderson being removed from Tory Whatsapp groups as per @SamCoatesSky ahead of defection to Reform UK
— Steven Swinford (@Steven_Swinford) March 11, 2024
There's already bad blood. One Tory MP: 'Lee is on his third political party in six years. I don't think he's going to move the dial for them. The only person who can do…
Lee Anderson being removed from Tory Whatsapp groups as per @SamCoatesSky ahead of defection to Reform UK
There’s already bad blood. One Tory MP: ‘Lee is on his third political party in six years. I don’t think he’s going to move the dial for them. The only person who can do that is Nigel Farage’
Worth noting that Lee Anderson is no admirer of Richard Tice
He has repeatedly ridiculed him on GB News while speaking favourably about Nigel Farage
There are some in the party who have been cautioning against bringing him over
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From Peter Walker, who is at the venue for the Reform UK press conference
If Reform UK are *not* about to unveil their first MP - Lee Anderson - it is going to be quite a lot of fuss for not much. pic.twitter.com/g5ELql3FhU
— Peter Walker (@peterwalker99) March 11, 2024
Former Tory deputy chair Lee Anderson reportedly set to defect to Reform UK
Christopher Hope, the political editor of GB News, covers Reform UK more thoroughly than almost anyone else in the lobby and he is reporting that Lee Anderson, the former Tory deputy chair, is defecting to Reform UK. He was elected as a Conservative, having previously been a Labour councillor, but was suspended from the parliamentary party after claiming Sadiq Khan was controlled by extremists.
Hope has posted these on X.
BREAKING @GBNEWS understands that former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson MP is set to defect to the right wing Reform UK party today.
— Christopher Hope📝 (@christopherhope) March 11, 2024
Lee Anderson and Reform UK not commenting.
More at @GBNEWS’ website now. Watch the press conference live on the channel from 10.30am.
BREAKING @GBNEWS understands that former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson MP is set to defect to the right wing Reform UK party today.
Lee Anderson and Reform UK not commenting.
More at @GBNEWS’ website now. Watch the press conference live on the channel from 10.30am.
BREAKING Sources close to the Reform UK Party tell me that as many as nine Conservative MPs are in advanced talks to join the Reform UK party.
Reform UK are holding a press conference at 10.30am.
Tugendhat defends calling for MoD spending to rise 'at much greater pace'
During his media round this morning Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, defended his decision to write a joint article with the Foreign Office minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan last week saying defence spending needs to rise “at much greater pace than at present”.
The article was implicitly critical of the budget, and was seen as pushing at the boundaries of what is allowed under collective responsibility.
In his interview on BBC Breakfast, Tugendhat said that the government has already set out a commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP and that Rishi Sunak was “absolutely right” on this.
Asked whether the article (a post on LinkedIn) had been approved by No 10, Tugendhat said it was not normal to clear social media posts through Downing Street.
And speaking on Sky News, Tugendhat said:
Look at the world that we’re seeing today. Look at the rise in autocracy. Look at the challenges that we’re facing.
This prime minister has set out that agenda and we need to deliver it. I want to achieve 2.5% now, you know, as soon as possible, that is exactly what we need to achieve. First step to do is to get to 2.5% and then we’ll have to adjust as the challenges we face evolve.
Security minister Tom Tugendhat rejects suggestion that government exploiting extremism threat for political advantage
Good morning. This week the government is due to issue a new official definition of extremism, and it comes after Rishi Sunak has been talking up the threat, which he has partly linked to to the pro-Palestinian marches that have been taking place since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Two weeks ago, in a briefing to police officers, Sunak said: “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule.” Then, in a surprise Friday night speech outside No 10, he said that extremist groups were “trying to tear us apart”. Later this week Michael Gove is expected to publish a new definition saying “core behaviours” that could constitute extremism include attempts to “overturn, exploit or undermine the UK’s system of liberal democracy to confer advantages or disadvantages on specific groups”.
While there is no doubt that events in the Middle East have triggered a huge increase in reported incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia, some of the government’s response has been criticised as alarmist, or even hypocritical. This is a message posted by Charlie Falconer, the former Labour lord chancellor, on X, last night.
Gove definition of extremism includes: “attempts to overturn.. or undermine UK system of liberal democracy to confer..disadvantages on specific groups.” Lib democracy includes rule of law. Rwanda Bill undermines rule of law to disadvantage asylum seekers. https://t.co/3QGf6rsofa
— Charlie Falconer (@LordCFalconer) March 10, 2024
Falconer was commenting on a Guardian story by Kiran Stacey saying that three Conservative home secretaries, Priti Patel, Sajid Javid and Amber Rudd, are among a group of experts in this field who have signed an open letter saying that the government should be building a political consensus on this issue and “it’s particularly important that that consensus is maintained and that no political party uses the issue to seek short term tactical advantage”. It does not directly accuses the government of politicising the issue, but the authors of the letter clearly fear this is a risk, and their intervention follows the row triggered by Lee Anderson, the former Tory deputy chair, claiming that Sadiq Khan, the Labour London mayor, was under the control of Islamists.
Javid and Rudd were both relatively liberal home secretaries (at least, in Tory terms), but Patel was, and is, a rightwing hardliner. Any Tory minister whose crackdown on extremism is deemed by her to be going a bit too far would be wise to consider that perhaps it is.
Here is Kiran’s story.
Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, was on the media round. Asked about the letter signed by Patel, Javid, Rudd and others, he said they were “absolutely right” to say that the government should not be using this issue for party political advantage. He went on:
I don’t think we should, and I don’t think we are.
When it was put to Tugendhat that Sunak’s claim that the UK was becoming subject to “mob rule” was not helpful, he declined to defend it. “We all speak in our own way about various different issues,” he said. But he defended what the PM said in his speech in Downing Street (which did not repeat the “mob rule” claim). Tudgendhat said:
I think the prime minister set out on the steps of Downing Street a very, very clear – and, I would argue, very inclusive – agenda on keeping British people safe. He made the point, and I think it’s the correct one to make, that extremism in this country sadly has resumed. We must take action to confront it.
Here is the agenda for the day.
Morning: Rishi Sunak is doing a visit.
Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting a school in Essex with Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary.
10.30am: Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference.
11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.
12.30pm: Former prime ministers Sir John Major and Gordon Brown speak at the launch of the Institute for Government’s “Fixing the Centre of Government” report.
2.30pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, takes questions in the Commons.
If you want to contact me, do try the “send us a message” feature. You’ll see it just below the byline – on the left of the screen, if you are reading on a laptop or a desktop. This is for people who want to message me directly. I find it very useful when people message to point out errors (even typos – no mistake is too small to correct). Often I find your questions very interesting, too. I can’t promise to reply to them all, but I will try to reply to as many as I can, either in the comments below the line; privately (if you leave an email address and that seems more appropriate); or in the main blog, if I think it is a topic of wide interest.
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