Ding ding ding! The gloves are coming off today in Birmingham, where Reform UK is hosting its day-long party conference. The Nigel Farage-led party is celebrating the election of its five MPs and its takedown of the Tories with speeches from a variety of MPs and party bigwigs crammed in between 12pm and 4pm. The current government is getting a fair share of walloping too, of course, with one Reform-Labour feud receiving particular attention.
Chief Whip Lee Anderson took to the stage this afternoon to recount his journey from Tory party deputy chairman to Reform’s red wall Rottweiler. Mr S would remind readers that Anderson lost the Conservative whip in February this year after making some rather controversial comments about how ‘Islamists’ have ‘got control of [Sadiq] Khan and…of London’. Promptly suspended, the Ashfield MP was urged at the time to apologise to London’s Labour mayor. He didn’t then – and today he doubled down on that decision once more.
‘Let me tell you conference,’ he fumed, ‘I will never apologise to that man.’ Cue the applause. Not one to resist taking a pop at a political nemesis, the Reform MP went on to rage:
What was his track record? Overall crime up by 21 per cent, violent crime 35 per cent, homicides 5 per cent, knife crime 54 per cent, sexual offences 51 per cent. It should be him who’s apologising to the people of London.
‘He’s a disgrace, you’re right,’ he nodded to one heckler in the crowd. No love lost there, then…
And Anderson didn’t stop at that. The Reform parliamentarian went on to taunt Khan further, mocking the mayor’s concerns about his own safety issues after he claimed, in the wake of the recent riots, that he no longer feels safe in the capital:
He’s got the cheek to tell us that he doesn’t feel safe in London. When I saw him, he’s got bodyguards, armoured car, 24-hour security, he’s in charge of the police – and he doesn’t feel safe? How does he think that 10 million people that live in London feel under his leadership? This man needs booted out of office for the sake of the world.
Those two aren’t reconciling anytime soon, eh? Talk about pulling no punches…
Comments