Lee Anderson (British politician)

Lee Anderson (born 6 January 1967) is a British politician who has served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Ashfield since 2019.

Elected as a member of the Conservative Party, he defected to Reform UK in March 2024 after having the whip suspended.

He is Reform UK's first and only MP.

Anderson was a deputy chairman of the Conservative Party under Rishi Sunak from February 2023 until January 2024 when he resigned to vote against the government on an amendment relating to the Rwanda asylum plan.

In February 2024, he had the Conservative whip suspended after refusing to apologise for stating that "Islamists" had "got control" of Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer.

Anderson was born on 6 January 1967 in Nottinghamshire.

His father was a coal miner.

Anderson attended John Davies Primary School and Ashfield School.

Anderson was the first Conservative to represent the constituency since the 1977 by-election.

Anderson has served on the Home Affairs Select Committee since March 2022 and previously was on the Women and Equalities Committee between June and December 2021.

He resigned from the latter role, citing the "time commitment required"; however, other members of the committee commented that he had not attended the majority of the meetings.

Anderson had also previously been criticised for sexist comments, including urging a female councillor to "stay out of big boy politics" in November 2021, and a double entendre in July 2018 about a female canvasser's breasts.

In his youth, Anderson was a member of Arthur Scargill's National Union of Mineworkers and campaigned for the Labour Party's Michael Foot in the 1983 general election.

He cites Scargill, Dennis Skinner, and Tony Benn as important influences in his early political beliefs.

Anderson worked as a coal miner for ten years, before volunteering with, and eventually working for Citizens Advice for another ten years.

Afterwards, he worked in hostels supporting homeless care leavers.

Prior to his parliamentary career, Anderson was a coal miner and worked for Citizens Advice Bureau before being elected as a Labour Party councillor in Ashfield in 2015.

Anderson was a long-time member of the Labour Party, and was elected as a Labour councillor in the 2015 Ashfield District Council election, representing Huthwaite and Brierley ward.

He supported Brexit in the 2016 UK EU membership referendum.

Anderson campaigned on this as well as on education, crime, healthcare, and halving the foreign aid budget.

During the campaign, he was criticised for staging a door knock while he was being filmed for a report by Channel 4 News reporter Michael Crick.

Prior to the visit, Anderson was recorded on his microphone instructing a man to "make out you know who I am, that you know I'm the candidate but not that you are a friend".

Will Moy of Full Fact said: "Misleading campaign techniques from parties and candidates won't only harm those who are caught out, but could damage voter confidence in our political system."

Anderson criticised "nuisance tenants" in a council estate who were "making people's lives a complete misery".

He suggested they should be evicted into tents in a field to pick vegetables.

The Labour Party criticised Anderson's comments and compared his idea to "forced labour camps".

Anderson was one of three Conservative Party candidates investigated by the party over claims of antisemitism during the election campaign.

The investigation was opened on the grounds that he was an active member of a Facebook group in which other members supported Tommy Robinson and promoted George Soros conspiracy theories.

The results of the investigation were not made public, but Anderson later attended online training sessions by the Antisemitism Policy Trust charity to improve his understanding of antisemitism.

He apologised for being a member of the group, and reported that he had left the group when the initial allegations were made.

Suspended by Labour, he defected to the Conservative Party in 2018 and was a Conservative councillor in Mansfield from 2019 to 2021, also serving as an MP for much of this time.

He was suspended by the local branch of the Labour Party in February 2018 after receiving a community-protection warning by the council for using boulders to block members of the Traveller community from "setting up camp at a site in the area".

Anderson defected to the Conservative Party the following month, which he stated was in response to the "takeover" of the Labour Party by the hard left, particularly through the left-wing political organisation Momentum.

He was elected as a Conservative councillor on Mansfield District Council, representing the Oakham ward between 2019 and 2021.

In July 2019, Anderson was selected as the Conservative candidate for Ashfield for the 2019 general election.

Anderson was elected as the MP for Ashfield at the 2019 general election, with a majority of 5,733.

The seat had previously been represented by Labour's Gloria De Piero, who stood down at that election.

He had previously worked as her office manager for five years.

Anderson is a member of the Common Sense Group, an informal group of Conservative MPs which formed in the summer of 2020.

Following the publication of an interim report on the connections between colonialism and National Trust properties, including links with historic slavery, Anderson was among the signatories of a letter by the group in The Telegraph in November 2020.