Lee Anderson vows never to apologise to Sadiq Khan and hits out at BBC

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Reform UK’s Lee Anderson has said he “will never apologise” to London Mayor Sadiq Khan, claiming he had “given our capital city away”.

The MP for Ashfield also took aim at the BBC, said some migrants are “destined for a life of crime” and described Just Stop Oil protesters as “undernourished vegans”.

Mr Anderson lost the Tory whip earlier this year after he claimed that “Islamists” had “got control” of Mr Khan, comments the London mayor described as “anti-Muslim and racist”.

At Reform UK’s party conference in Birmingham, Mr Anderson said his comments were “constructive criticism” and the London mayor should be “thoroughly ashamed of himself”.

The MP, who defected to Reform, added: “I was told at the time that I must apologise to Labour’s mayor in London. Let me tell you, I will never apologise to that man.”

Later, members of the audience in the auditorium chanted “rip it up” as the Reform chief whip brandished a TV licence letter in the room.

Addressing the crowd, he said: “Let’s be honest friends, we have made mistakes in the past and when we make mistakes we must apologise, and we have been responsible for some awful things, things like the BBC.”

He went on: “Just a few weeks back they sent me a reminder for my TV licence, some of you may have seen that I ripped it up online.”

“Guess what, they’ve sent me another,” he added.

“What do you think we should do with this?” Mr Anderson asked, before ripping it up on the stage.

Earlier in his address he dismissed net zero policies as a “load of rubbish” and its proponents as “lunatics”.

Mr Anderson attacked Just Stop Oil activists causing disruption in London as “undernourished vegans, grey-haired, armed with their Just Stop Oil hi-vis vests and a dangerous pair of Jesus sandals” who had brought the capital “to a standstill” while the Metropolitan Police “stood by and did nothing but dance the macarena”.

Reform’s first MP went on to claim migrants arriving in the UK via small boats have “broken into our country” and have “committed all sorts of horrific crimes”.

“Over the past two years nearly 150,000 illegal migrants have crossed this Channel and been picked up by British boats and then placed in four-star hotels, given free legal advice and then allowed to settle in our country. It’s a disgrace,” he said.

“Ninety per cent of these arrivals are young men, some destined for a life of crime. We have seen it before. They have come to this country and committed all sorts of horrific crimes, and our governments have passed three Acts of Parliament to stop the boats and they still keep coming.

“These men have broken into our country and guess what, conference? I do not want them here. I want my country back and the country I’m talking about would not tolerate this stupidity.”

Mr Anderson said that in the 1980s or 1990s councils would give people “three sets of keys and say go and look at three houses and pick the one you want” but now there are thousands of people on the council house waiting list in Ashfield and “you’ve got literally no chance at all of ever getting a council house”.

“Yet Parliament thinks it’s a good idea to let over one million people a year enter our country,” he claimed.

“These idiot politicians tell us that mass migration is a great thing that makes us all better off. Idiots, the lot of them.”

As party leader Nigel Farage outlined plans to professionalise the party and establish structures to build on its general election vote share of 4.1 million, Mr Anderson said Reform will win “hundreds of seats” at council elections in 2025.

He said: “Next year, we’re going to win hundreds of seats, council seats, across the country – that’s a fact.

“But we must take this fight to Parliament so we can take back control of our country and win the 2029 general election and put Nigel in Number 10.

“Friends, we can do this but we can only do it if we stand strong. The establishment absolutely hate us. They want us gone but we’re going nowhere.”

Mr Anderson added: “Listen, the mainstream parties are scared of us and so they should be, because we’re coming for them at every single ballot box in the country.”