The bold, brave Lee Anderson
Politics Notebook #12: When you’re concerned about immigration but more concerned about Labour MPs taking the mick.
Lee Anderson.
Coal miner turned Tory MP.
Hard-as-nails scourge of lefties and the woke.
Plain-spoken Midlander who tells it like it is.
When the Ashfield MP quit as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party on Tuesday, he did so because he could not support the government’s Rwanda Bill, which Number 10 claims will make it possible to finally transfer some illegal immigrants to Kigali. (As I have argued in The Spectator, the Bill very likely will not do that and will end up bogged down in the courts, as Tory backbenchers warned Number 10 it would.)
That legislation, Anderson said, needed ‘beefing up’. He told GB News:
I can't be in a position to vote for something which I don't believe in.
So he handed Rishi Sunak his resignation letter.
This made sense, for Anderson has been one of the most strident voices on immigration.
In November 2021, he suggested sending migrants to the Falkland Islands, though by November 2023 he had changed his mind and wanted them transferred to Orkney instead.
In February 2023, he proposed a naval stand-off as the solution to the boats crisis, telling The Spectator:
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 standoff.
When pro-migration charities complained about migrants being accommodated on barges, Anderson told the Daily Express:
If they don't like barges then they should fuck off back to France.
He has even proposed that ministers disregard the law to deal with illegal migration. After the Supreme Court found the Rwanda scheme to be unlawful, Anderson told reporters:
My take is we should just put the planes in the air now and send them to Rwanda and show strength… I think we should ignore the laws and send them straight back the same day.
Naturally, when the Rwanda Bill had its third reading in the Commons on Wednesday, Anderson voted for amendments from Conservative backbenchers Bill Cash and Robert Jenrick to toughen up the legislation.
Cash’s amendment would have prevented either UK or international law from being used to stop deportations to Rwanda while Jenrick’s addition would have limited the ability of migrants to appeal against their deportation.
The government and the opposition parties voted those amendments down, dashing Anderson’s hopes of a ‘beefed up’ Bill.
So, what did the bold, brave Lee Anderson do when it came time for the final vote?
Did he stand by his principles and join 11 other Tory MPs in voting against the Bill?
Did he heck as like.
He abstained. After all that huffing and puffing, years of shaking his fist and thundering against illegal immigration on GB News, he meekly stuck his hands in his pockets and decided not to be counted.
In fact, it’s worse than that. He originally intended to show some spine and vote against the Bill, but changed his mind after he saw Labour MPs laughing in the No lobby.
I’m not making that up. Following the division, he told GB News that he switched his vote from No to Abstain because ‘the Labour lot were all giggling and laughing and taking the mick’, adding:
I couldn’t see how I could support the Bill... I got into the No lobby and spent about two or three minutes with a colleague in there… I couldn’t do it, so I walked out. So I’ve abstained. I wanted to vote No but when I saw that lot in there laughing there is no way I could support them above the party that has given me a political home.
To recap: Lee Anderson was so concerned that the Rwanda Bill was too weak to be effective that he resigned as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. So concerned that he voted for amendments to tighten up the legislation. So concerned that he walked into the No lobby to vote against the Bill.
And then changed his mind because Labour MPs were giggling. He was prepared to stick to his principles until he got triggered by some jokes. What a snowflake.
Lee Anderson’s political star rose because he reflected a frustration among traditional Tories that the government was politically adrift, ideologically timid, failing to make the most of Brexit. That it had, in sum, gone a bit wobbly.
That frustration is real but Anderson is not. Like so many populist blowhards, he gives good chat but folds like a clapped-out deckchair when it comes to doing anything substantive. The voters of Ashfield might have thought that when they sent Anderson to Parliament, he was going there to represent them and their interests, even when it was difficult, even when it meant going against his own party, even when Labour MPs sneered and snickered.
They might have thought that their MP would stand by his principles on immigration and border control. He’s meant to be a tough guy, after all, not some soy boy who flees to a safe space because someone cracked a few gags.
The bold, brave Lee Anderson can roll with the punches, but not the punchlines.
Many thanks for a judicious and much needed dismantling of this excuse for a policy maker. Real people with convictions find a way; pretenders find a chair on GB news to bleat.