‘30p Lee’ has become electoral catnip – and politically untameable

As an unrepentant Lee Anderson was doubling down on his “Islamophobic” attacks on Sadiq Khan, the WhatsApp group for the 2019 intake of Conservative MPs was going wild.

Not with alarm that “30p Lee” – a one-time coal miner and Labour councillor known for explosively provocative comments – had finally gone too far.

But with Red Wall MPs worrying that a rattled Rishi Sunak might throw out a figure that they see as the party’s most authentic link with the working-class voters of the Midlands and northern region that, four years ago, backed the Tories for the first – and perhaps last – time.

“There’s a lot of strong views being expressed in the group,” said one Conservative MP, speaking on condition of anonymity, describing Anderson’s brand of headline-grabbing outbursts as “a breath of fresh air”.

Not all Tories see him that way. Sajjad Karim, a former Conservative MEP who chaired the European Parliament’s working group on Islamophobia, said Sunak would suffer a “disastrous” election result if he allowed Anderson’s brand of dog-whistle racism to continue.

Meanwhile, Nigel Farage and Reform UK leader Richard Tice are openly courting Anderson as a potential defector to their anti-woke and anti-immigration successor to the Brexit Party.

Clearly, whether you admire or loathe Anderson, the Ashfield MP has political traction far bigger than either his 5,000 majority or his four-and-a-bit years in Parliament suggest.

“There won’t be many ambulances picking up fallen Tories from the field of battle after the next election,” said a colleague. “Lee is an exception. He could slip into a new career on TV seamlessly, or he could cross over to Reform.”

Undeniably, Anderson has the gift of winding up his Labour opponents in a broad Nottinghamshire drawl, while also revving up a certain type of supporter: typically working-class, white males who did not attend higher education and who feel their own priorities are ignored or disdained by the effete elite at Westminster.

He claimed families could be fed healthy meals for 30p per head, earning an early nickname that opponents thought would expose him as ridiculous, belatedly realising he fed on the controversy. He branded traveller families as thieves who would steal the tools from your garden shed, and advised asylum seekers complaining about conditions on the Bibby Stockholm barge to “f*** off back to France”.

In another of his regular interventions against migrants crossing the Channel in small boats, he declared: “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.”

A Conservative backroom aide on the right of the party says of Anderson: “I’m sure that many people in the media think of him as unsophisticated. But he is the personification of an important section of the 2019 electoral coalition that Boris [Johnson] managed to embrace and that the party is now in danger of losing.

“They are voters who perhaps rarely voted until Brexit, and probably never voted Conservative until 2019.

“There is a danger the government is focused on appealing to the ‘Blue Wall’ seats that are represented by members of the Cabinet, instead of trying to hold together that electoral coalition.”

London is a particular flashpoint in the internal Conservative Party strife over how scarce resources and competing messages are deployed in the coming election. Demographically, the capital city has been shifting from the Conservatives for decades, a process sped up by Brexit.

It is exemplified by the decline in Iain Duncan Smith’s majority in Chingford and Woodford Green, once Lord Tebbit’s stamping ground, from around 15,000 in 1992 to just 1,262 after boundary changes and the growth of a more diverse community. Some 2019 Conservatives nursing small majorities ask why their party should waste time pandering to voters in a lost cause like London when their victories of four years ago uncovered a rich seam of potential Tory growth?

Anderson’s attacks on Khan and on “Islamists” in the capital resonate with this internal Tory divide. And though they may have no particular relevance to the daily lives of voters in Ashfield and other Red Wall constituencies, they symbolise disaffection with Westminster about one issue above all: immigration.

Gideon Skinner, of pollsters Ipsos, has tracked the political views of Britons for years and says that overall the bigger political worry for the Conservatives is voter concerns over immigration, even though that is driven by both economic and cultural factors. Islamophobia itself is less of an election issue, though there is a proportion of the British public with negative views towards Islam, and even though many Britons also think that Muslims face discrimination.

“The challenge for the Conservatives is that even among their own supporters, there is a lot of criticism of them on the issue – although there is little sign that they prefer Labour’s approach either,” said Skinner. “And there is clearly a section of the Conservatives’ 2019 electoral coalition – those more likely to support Brexit, and who felt more favourably towards Boris Johnson – who are open to the idea of voting for Reform.”

Immigration currently stands as the fourth most important issue in Ipsos’s monthly issues index, at 18 per cent, after the NHS (34 per cent) the economy (29 per cent), and inflation (26 per cent). However, it runs more than twice as high among Conservatives as Labour supporters (24 per cent vs 9 per cent).

So what are the chances of Anderson jumping ship from the Conservatives, from which he has been suspended, to Reform UK before the next election?

“I would be very surprised if he did that,” said one MP who knows him well. “Lee is a common-sense guy, and Reform are really just agitators.”

Much more likely, said the MP, is that Anderson will carve out a well-paid new career on GB News, the Reform-friendly channel that already pays him a reported £100,000 a year to present a show.

“If Ashfield goes down the pan, I expect that in six months he will be an established media commentator.”

In an ideal world, opines a northern Tory MP, Sunak would hug Anderson close just as Tony Blair kept John Prescott inside his tent. “Blair and Prescott appealed to different constituencies and that helped maximise New Labour’s reach,” said the MP. “Rishi needs to do the same with Lee – not lose him before a critical election, because he can’t afford to look out of touch, which is his weakness.”

Or, as the previous MP put it: “You can’t say ‘Bullingdon Club’ and ‘Lee Anderson’ in the same sentence.”

However, Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general who was among the centrists purged from the Conservative ranks in the Brexit wars, calls that “deranged thinking”. He told The Independent: “Yes, the Conservatives have forfeited the Red Wall, but they have also lost a lot of other voters who are not going to be won back by Lee Anderson. He is a disaster for the Conservatives.”

The problem for Sunak is that Anderson shows little sign of wanting to be tamed and no desire at all to be seen as a fading prime minister’s poodle.

Which leaves the prime minister in a dilemma about what to do with 30p Lee, a man who spells trouble whether inside the tent or outside of it.