Former Conservative MP Lee Anderson was confirmed to have joined Reform UK on March 11.
Anderson, a former coal miner and Labour councilor, has been the MP for the constituency of Ashfield in Nottinghamshire since the 2019 General Election.
Reform UK is the successor party to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. It is led by Richard Tice, although Farage remains its President. Presenting itself as to the right of the Conservative Party.
In February 2023, Rishi Sunak appointed Lee Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party to shore up support in the working class ‘Red Wall’.
However Anderson has caused controversy with his boycotting of the male English football team in 2021 after they took the knee against racism.
It then emerged that Anderson had said that most people attending food banks did so because they did not know how to budget correctly.
Anderson hosts a show on GB News, where he made the claim that immigrants who disliked being put on Barges “should f**k off back to France.”
Lee later resigned as Deputy Chairman in January 2024 to vote for against an amendment to the Conservative Party’s Rwanda Bill, but because the Labour MPs in the lobby laughed at him, he voted for the Bill.
Lee lost the Conservative whip in February for making the anti-Muslim comment that London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, was controlled by Islamists.
“Nigel Farage – Caricature” by DonkeyHotey is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
“Official portrait of Lee Anderson MP crop 2” by David Woolfall is licensed under CC BY 3.0.