(Cat) food for thought: Lee Anderson is well past his political nine lives

As a commentary on the state of political debate in modern Britain, it can’t easily be improved upon: the deputy chairman of the Conservative Party trying to feed cat food to a reality TV star in a discussion about a (made-up) trans rights story, on his own show and broadcast on a dedicated and deranged hard-right television channel.

What, one has to ask, has become of Britain? Lee Anderson, the man with the spoon and a can of cat food, is MP for “red wall” Ashfield in Nottinghamshire. He was appointed to his senior party role by Rishi Sunak in February in a desperate, not to say condescending, attempt to hang on to the ex-Labour voters who were duped into voting for Boris Johnson’s Tories 2019, supposedly to “get Brexit done”, a project which has since failed.

“Lee-anderthal” been gaslighting and alienating voters by making an idiot of himself ever since. Or, to be fair, making as much of a fool of himself as he ever has been, given that he was given the derisive nickname “30p Lee” for his claim that you can make a meal and feed someone for as little as that (and which would suggest an adult can subsist in the UK on about £7 a week).

Since then, he’s spooned cold baked beans into the open, baby-like mouth of another Notts Tory MP (“Open your mouth, here comes the train”). For this programme Anderson receives £100,000 on top of his £86,000 MP salary (despite saying that no MP needs a second job).

The idea of giving this unpromising, graceless figure such a position was that while the posh, suave likes of Sunak, Tory chair Greg Hands (MP for Chelsea) and Jeremy Hunt (representing a Surrey constituency), could talk about tight monetary policy, social cohesion and tackling the climate crisis to the nice traditional Tory voters in the Home Counties, 30p Lee could knock out the usual bar-room anti-migrant, transphobic, anti-poor prejudices in the deprived former coalfields and coastal towns.

It’s fair to say that that doesn’t suggest much sincerity on the part of the Tories, and it’s an electoral strategy that’s been found wanting. This is because what actually happened is that the people in the Midlands and the North could hear what Sunak was saying and not be convinced by it; while the folk in the South could easily see and be appalled by 30p Lee mucking about on the telly and social media, and be repelled by his callous, brutalist attitudes (or “catitudes”, in the latest example).

As well they would be if they happened across the clip of him trying to feed former Apprentice winner Michelle Dewberry some pet food the other day. At first I thought that he was trying to tell us that if we’re feeling hard up we could all live on little sachets of meat, jelly or fish.

That would at least would have been an original and characteristic – if horrifying – contribution from 30p to the debate on the very real cost of living crisis. But no, it was a tortured prank based on a probably apocryphal story about a child being allowed by her school to “identify” as a cat. As a way of ridiculing trans people, it would have been better if the original trans-feline tale (pun intended) had been true.

As it was, Dewberry’s previous weak-as-a-kitten attempt at satire by dressing as a cat was far surpassed by Lee’s “implawsible” attempts at humour. It was, in truth, a bit creepy. “We have got a tin of cat food here,” Lee purred at his prey, but Dewberry rightly arched her back and hissed back at him: “I’m not eating bloody cat food, are you mental? No I don’t want to, I don’t want to.” Meeeeoooow!

Undeterred, 30p tried to nuzzle up, and asked “If I have a forkful, will you have one as well?” Irresistible, no?

I suppose the obvious inclusion to this tale (laboured pun intended) of our times is that the Tories don’t stand a cat in hell’s chance of winning the next election, and that Lee is headed for the nearest pet rescue centre as soon as the intelligent, decent and humane voters of Nottinghamshire go to the polls.

Meanwhile, me duck, he wants neutering, him.