Former senior Tory Lee Anderson defects to fringe right-wing party

Boris Johnson expected to campaign for the Con­servatives in red wall seats after a thawing in relations with Rishi Sunak.

Reform UK leader Richard Tice, left, and Lee Anderson announce the latter’s defection in London on Monday. Picture: Getty Images

Embattled British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak suffered a fresh blow overnight on Monday when a former ally defected to a right-wing populist party that is worrying the ruling Tories ahead of this year’s general election.

Lee Anderson announced he was joining Reform UK, weeks after he was suspended from Mr Sunak’s Conservative party over comments widely condemned as racist and Islamophobic.

The 57-year-old former deputy chairman of the Tories became the first MP to represent Reform, whose honorary president is arch-Eurosceptic and Brexit figurehead Nigel Farage.

The fringe party is polling at some 10 per cent in opinion surveys, which if replicated at the election could split the right-wing vote in key constituencies. That would make it even harder for the Tories, in power since 2010, to fend off a resurgent Labour party that is soaring ahead in the polls.

To blunt Reform’s impact, Mr Sunak could take his party further rightward, continuing a trend in recent decades that has accelerated following the 2016 referendum on leaving the EU. Doing so risks alienating more socially liberal voters, however. Mr Anderson is an MP in a so-called red wall seat of working-class voters in northern England crucial to the Conservatives and Labour’s chances of winning the election.

The seats had been Labour strongholds before former prime minister Boris Johnson flipped them for the Conservatives during his landslide win at the last election in 2019 on a promise to “get Brexit done”.

The Times reported on Tuesday that Mr Johnson was expected to campaign for the Con­servatives in red wall seats before the general election after a thawing in relations with Mr Sunak.

The former prime minister is likely to be deployed in the north of England and the Midlands as the Tories seek to retain the voters who helped Mr Johnson to an 80-seat majority in 2019.

The New Conservatives, a group of MPs on the right of the Tory party who have rebelled against Mr Sunak, said the Conservative party was responsible for Mr Anderson’s defection.

“We cannot pretend any longer that ‘the plan is working’. We need to change course ­urgently,” the group said.

Reform rails against immigration, net-zero energy policies and what it calls overbearing “nanny state” government regu­lations, and its members regularly heap praise on former US president Donald Trump.

“I want my country back,” Mr Anderson said in London as he announced his defection.

He had been widely tipped to join Reform after he was suspended from the parliamentary party of the Conservatives last month for refusing to apologise after saying London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan was controlled by Islamists.

“Anderson’s defection does highlight the ongoing electoral problem facing Rishi Sunak, with attacks coming from the left and right,” said Emma Levin of the polling firm Savanta. She cautioned the move “will likely mean very little in national polling terms”.

“Lee Anderson’s name recognition among the wider public is low, and if voters are aware of him, it is probably because they saw (and disagreed) with his comments that led to his suspension from the Conservative party,” she said.

In the UK, a by-election is not automatically triggered if an MP changes party affiliation, though they stand down and seek re-­election under their new allegiance or as an independent.

AFP