'30p Lee' Anderson becomes Tory deputy chairman

'30p Lee'' Anderson, the 56 year old  ex miner and Tory MP for Ashfield  has become the Deputy Chairman of the party, five years after defecting from Labour who he represented as a councillor before he went on to serve as a Tory councillor in Mansfield and just over three years after his election to the seat. despite being known for a number of unsavoury things he has said and done.. 

He defected after he was suspended by his local group for placing concrete blocks to stop travellers illegally camping in a car park.  Discussing his change of party, he has blamed a ‘takeover’ of Labour by the ‘hard-left’ under former leader Jeremy Corbyn. 

In 2019, while on the campaign trail, he posted a video on social media where he criticised “nuisance tenants” in a council estate for “making people’s lives a complete misery”. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he went on to argue they should be be evicted and forced to live in tents in a field where they would pick vegetables. 

Around the same time, he and two other Conservative candidates became the subject of a party investigation after it was alleged that he was an active member of a Facebook group where members expressed support for far-right figure Tommy Robinson.

He will take his new position alongside new Tory chairman Greg Hands, who was given the job following the sacking of Nadhim Zahawi over his tax affairs.  Mr Anderson retweeted the announcement from the official Conservative Twitter account, saying: ‘Yes it’s true. From the pits to Parliament. Feeling very proud.’ 

Anderson is known as ' 30p Lee' because he claimed, to much shaking of heads, that people could feed themselves on 30p a day if they could budget and cook properly. Anderson revived the riff in January by posting a picture – two, in fact – that highlighted Tesco own brand “wheat biscuits”. “Just been asked for proof of a 30p breakfast. There you go,” he wrote, as others pointed out issues to do with nutrition (among others). 

Anderson is no stranger to controversy, who staged a door knock during the 2019 general election campaign.Journalist Michael Crick caught him getting one of his friends to pose as an anti-Labour swing voter. Anderson forgot he was wearing a live mic while he phoned his friend to set up the encounter to impress the reporter.  “Make out you know who I am... you know I’m the candidate, but not a friend, alright?,” Anderson was recorded saying as he spelled out instructions to his friend minutes before bringing the journalist to his door. 

After Anderson was elected, the controversies kept racking up. In 2021, he refused to watch the England team’s matches at the Euro 2020 tournament because players were taking the knee, an anti-racist gesture. He described Black Lives Matter as a “political movement whose core principles aim to undermine our very way of life”. 

Shortly afterwards, he hit out at the Traveller community in Ashfield, accusing them of stealing people’s lawnmowers and tools. 

Anderson has also spoken out against refugees. Speaking in the House of Commons, he suggested most who arrive in the UK via routes deemed “illegal” by the government are “economic migrants” rather than “genuine asylum seekers”

When told that the Home Office had concluded that the significant majority of those who arrive to the UK in boats are refugees, he said: “I think that is a fault of the old failing asylum system. When they get in they know how to fill the forms out.”  

In May  2022 he was slammed  after claiming there was no “massive use” for foodbanks in Britain and that people who relied on the service “cannot cook or budget properly.”Anderson then, invited the opposition benches in the Commons to visit a foodbank in his constituency to “see the brilliant scheme we have got in place: when people come for a food parcel, they have to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course.”

Labour’s shadow work and pensions minister Karen Buck said at the time that “out of touch” doesn’t even come close to describing his comments.

She said: “The idea that the problem is cooking skills and not 12 years of government decisions that are pushing people into extreme poverty is beyond belief.”

Anderson's comments came as economists warned that about 1.3 million households in Britain will struggle to pay their food and energy bills amid a deepening cost-of-living crisis.

To top all this in an interview with The Spectator magazine a few days before his appointment,  Anderson said he would support the UK reintroducing the death penalty because “nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed. You know that, don’t you? 100% success rate.  “Now I’d be very careful on that one because you’ll get the certain groups saying: “You can never prove it.” Well, you can prove it if they have videoed it and are on camera – like the Lee Rigby killers. I mean: they should have gone, same week. I don’t want to pay for these people.”   Anderson’s comments drew condemnation online, with one social media user commenting: “I see tory knuckle dragger Lee Anderson is now supporting the resurrection of the death penalty. Coupled with his demonisation of benefit claimants/travellers/refugees its obvious why Sunak apptd him, the tories are going low, deeper into the sewer, Anderson is their sewer rat..” 

Others have pointed out that Anderson is calling for the state execution of innocent people, because no conviction is ever utterly certain.  Rishi Sunak at least  immediately said Anderson’s views were not those of the government, slapping him down and creating a distraction from the important real news at the same time.

If the government wanted to distract attention from something, such as a former prime minister trying to make a comeback, or a different former prime minister being increasingly incriminated in a ‘jobs for favours’ scandal – it was probably mission accomplished for a while.

I guess Anderson actually is perfect for the job (a role of no great significance) because as an individual who seems to rejoice in deliberately  making provoking aggressive statements that fail to recognise the complexities facing the country at this present time. In fact while being a divisive ludicrous  right wing reactionary, he is in  no different to any other Tory, I sincerely hope that  his party are totally decimated at the upcoming local elections in May, it would be a really good wake up call for them .ahead of a national parliamentary election expected in 2024, when we get the much deserved change that we all deserve..