The Conservative Party

OPINION about Lee Anderson by i columnist Ian Dunt
By Ian Dunt
i columnist February 8, 2023 3:28 pm (Updated February 9, 2023 11:04 am)
Lee Anderson’s appointment is a Tory attempt to grind us down, but we need to stay angry.
He is the latest example of a figure on the Tory benches who has managed to reach the upper echelons of public life specifically by being stupid.
Anderson was not given this position despite his stupidity. He was given it because of his stupidity.
If you’ve somehow managed to avoid Lee Anderson, the new vice-chair of the Conservative Party, here’s what you need to know.
His inadequacies appear so extensive that to simply list them without any additional details would require the rest of this column, but the skeletal version goes like this. He was suspended from the local Labour group in 2018 for trying to use boulders to deter a traveller encampment, at which point he defected to the Conservatives.
During the 2019 general election campaign he was caught setting up one of his mates to act like a voter he had just encountered during a TV interview. “Make out you know who I am,” he told him on the phone, unaware that he had left his mic on, “that you know I’m the candidate, but not a friend.” That friend then spent most of the subsequent interview talking about how he wanted people to be flogged with a cat-o-nine tails.
He boycotted the England team because they took the knee. He claims people can cook a meal for 30p. He says nurses use foodbanks because they can’t budget. He has used the salary and relationship status of his own staff to corroborate his arguments.
He is, in short, an imbecile of the very highest order. I first noticed him during a Commons debate on Priti Patel’s policing bill in March 2021. Halfway through, Anderson rose to deliver his contribution. “Before lockdown,” he said, “residents would often see me sat in the front of a police car going out on patrol and supporting our police, which is in sharp contrast to some Labour politicians, who have been seen in the back of police cars on the way to the station.”
It was like some kind of moron had broken into the Commons and started shouting deranged absurdities at the people in front of him. The Chamber sat in silence. The Tory MPs around Anderson looked as incredulous as the Labour MPs opposite him. And then the horrible reality dawned. He wasn’t some lunatic intruder. He was an elected member of parliament, tasked with scrutinising legislation and representing his constituents. His mere presence seemed to corrode the solemnity of the institution around him. It marked a decline in the status of the country, of a disintegration into sniggering degeneracy.
You can imagine the reasons why Greg Hands was made chairman: he has dual American/British nationality, lives in London, has a German wife, speaks five European languages and is an ally of George Osborne. In other words, he is more than a bit Remainy. Anderson presumably worked as a counterbalancing sop to the Tory reactionary wing.
But of course the reverse is also true. Anderson’s appointment negates the seriousness which Sunak claims to represent. His reshuffle made some perfectly sensible changes to departmental responsibilities. To have orchestrated all that and then made Anderson deputy chair is like carefully constructing a model railway set and then covering it in custard pie.
Anderson is sold as a “Red Wall rottweiler” – someone who will say the things other people won’t say, who feels free to spit bile about travellers, food bank users and trans people without any moral restraint, or even basic politeness, which might guide many civilised people.
The “Rottweiler” role used to refer to a figure who would savagely attack the other party. It was used for Conservative Chris Grayling once and Labour’s Damian McBride. Now it is something different. It is a kind of talismanic tribalism, where you install people not for their positive attributes, but for the extent to which they upset those who disagree with them. It is the mentality of own-the-libs, where even very senior positions are occupied by those whose primary function is to outrage those their opponents don’t like. This is the reason figures like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries were put in government by Boris Johnson.
Once upon a time, it worked, albeit on its own terms. We did get angry. It felt as if Britain was sinking into the sea, as if the basic standards of national life were slowly submerging under the water line. But now, after years of it, it’s honestly hard to get too cross about it. It smells more like desperation than vandalism. They have no new tricks. They know they’re doomed, that they are slumping towards electoral oblivion, and yet all they have are the same old tired and mendacious tactical gambits.
But in truth, our resignation is not healthy. Our exhaustion is not useful. It would be better for us if the own-the-libs approach continued to work. Because we should be angry. We should be indignant. The sum result of these sorts of appointments is that we stop functioning as anything remotely approaching a serious country.
It’s not about what Anderson is or what he says. It’s about why he was appointed. He was not given this position despite his stupidity. He was given it because of his stupidity. He is the latest example of a figure on the Tory benches who has managed to reach the upper echelons of public life specifically by being stupid. And that, in the end, is the real damage.
We live in a political era where the rulebook of success is based, in no small part, on performative meanness and ignorance. Anderson is totemic of it. And by validating him, Sunak has lost any right to be considered a serious political figure.
Click to expand...

inews.co.uk

Lee Anderson's appointment is a Tory attempt to grind us down, but we need to stay angry

He is the latest example of a figure on the Tory benches who has managed to reach the upper echelons of public life specifically by being stupid
inews.co.uk inews.co.uk
 
shemnel said:
West Lancs MP by-election today. Sunak's first voter test of 2023.

Gen Election 2019: 52% Lab, 36% Con
Gen Election 2017: 59% Lab, 37% Con
Gen Election 2015: 49% Lab, 32% Con

of interest: Howling Lord Hope, leader of the Monster Raving Loony Party, has entered as one of 6 candidates.
Click to expand...

results;

By-election 2023: 62% Labour, 25% Conservative. (Brexit Party, now Reform UK, stayed on 4%)

1 in 4 still want the Conservative Party in charge, in that example. Turnout was typically low in a by-election, 32%.
 
shemnel said:
results;

By-election 2023: 62% Labour, 25% Conservative. (Brexit Party, now Reform UK, stayed on 4%)

1 in 4 still want the Conservative Party in charge, in that example. Turnout was typically low in a by-election, 32%.
Click to expand...
To be fair, that is a huge percentage change and if mirrored across society, will have a dramatic effect on the future of the Conservative party.
 
shemnel said:
results;

By-election 2023: 62% Labour, 25% Conservative. (Brexit Party, now Reform UK, stayed on 4%)

1 in 4 still want the Conservative Party in charge, in that example. Turnout was typically low in a by-election, 32%.
Click to expand...

I'd think the near 5% going to Reform would be a concern for them.
 
Asset stripping fuckers, they’ve taken us all for a ride.

The question should be ‘Where has all the money gone given that every aspect of public services, from the NHS to the military, is in complete disarray and we are left with a national debt that has more than doubled during their tenure?’.
 
The Future’s Blue! said:
Asset stripping fuckers, they’ve taken us all for a ride.

The question should be ‘Where has all the money gone given that every aspect of public services, from the NHS to the military, is in complete disarray and we are left with a national debt that has more than doubled during their tenure?’.
Click to expand...
I've always voted Labour and think Labour will win the next election BUT I think the Tories have scored so many own goals that they have beaten themselves. If Labour are to make any lasting impact then they need to convince the country that they have the ideas and competence to get say 15 years in power. So, with that in mind, can I ask you and anyone else really. What should Labour do immediately (first term) and what can they have as long term targets (realistic targets, remember they have to get reelected)?
 
The Future’s Blue! said:
Asset stripping fuckers, they’ve taken us all for a ride.

The question should be ‘Where has all the money gone given that every aspect of public services, from the NHS to the military, is in complete disarray and we are left with a national debt that has more than doubled during their tenure?’.
Click to expand...

Its gone offshore mate........ the economy may be large but vast sums have wafted up to companies and individuals who unlike in prior times moved it out of the country rather than sought to invest it in the country and its industry for the greater good.
 
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