Ashfield was the centre of the nation’s political news last week as the district’s MP, Lee Anderson, defected to Reform UK. The controversial MP had been suspended from the Conservative Party since 24 February and was sitting as an independent MP, after refusing to apologise or withdraw remarks he made about the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.
The remarks were made in an interview on GB News. During it, Anderson said that Khan had “given our capital city away to his mates” and that Islamists had got control of London and its Mayor.
After a fortnight of speculation, Anderson appeared at a press conference with Reform UK leader Richard Tice last Monday (11 March) to confirm that he had joined the party. In doing so, he became Reform UK’s first Member of Parliament.
“I’ll start by saying I want my country back”, Anderson said at the press conference. “Over the last year or so I have done a lot of soul searching on my political journey. I don’t expect much in politics other than to be able to speak my mind and to be able to speak on behalf of my friends and family and some of my constituents.”
Tice described Anderson as “a champion of the red wall”, and said that he was “someone who completely understands it, who is trusted by voters to tell it as it is, no nonsense, no waffle, clear, basic, common sense.”
On Friday, Tice and Anderson toured Ashfield in an open-top bus, calling in at Kirkby, Selston, Sutton and Skegby for meet-the-people walkabouts, with journalists and film crews from the national media covering the events. It didn’t go completely to plan. At one stop, he was berated by a female constituent and at Selston, a worker at the Co-op threatened to call the police if the open top bus wasn’t removed from their car park.
