Sunak was right to suspend Lee Anderson

When Lee Anderson was made deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, it was on the understanding that he’d explode now and again. Say something outrageous, cause a stir. The unelected Rishi Sunak had a wide conservative coalition to keep together and was mindful that, as a besuited Goldman Sachs alumnus, he may struggle to keep the right of the party (and the electorate) on board. Occasional outbursts from Suella Braverman and Lee Anderson were helpful: they were chaff and flares which would save him from incoming missiles from the right.

But Sunak is up against the strong centrifugal forces pulling conservatives further to the right. A great many politicians look at Trump’s success and think the future lies in being angry and setting up camp outside the Overton window. So they engage in what you might call vice signalling, the opposite of virtue signalling. They say murky stuff that they don’t necessarily believe, to establish their credentials as a truth-speaking bad boy (or girl), nemesis of the woke establishment, etc. Liz Truss’s turn at CPAC last week is an example of this.

Such a tactic carries danger. It risks decency being left behind in pursuit of the idea that, if something is unsayable, then it has to be said. In telling GB News that Islamists have somehow ‘got control’ of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London and a Muslim, Lee Anderson crossed a line. Other Tories sensed this immediately and told Sunak they’d go public and call for Anderson’s firing if No10 did not withdraw the whip. A far bigger blow-up was in prospect. Sunak sought to defuse this by asking Anderson to clarify or apologise. When he didn’t, he left Sunak with no choice.

A kind interpretation of this to say that Anderson was speaking more broadly. He was commenting on Suella Braverman’s recent Telegraph article, headlined ‘Islamists are bullying Britain into submission.’ He added his thoughts:-

I don’t actually believe that these Islamists have got control of our country. But what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London and they’ve got control of Starmer as well. We have seen the shocking scenes played out in parliament just a few nights back, where Starmer crumbled. He put pressure on the Speaker to alter the rules.

But his comment on Starmer, too, was disgusting. Starmer wanted to escape a trap set for him by the SNP, to dodge an embarrassing rebellion. He was acting in his political self-interest and it worked. To say is was somehow ‘controlled’ by the Islamists is idiotic. Then Anderson then swung back to Sadiq Khan

People are just turning up in their thousands and doing anything they want and they are laughing at the police. And I feel absolutely disgusted. This stems with Khan. He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates.

The suggestion here was both idiotic and vile. What evidence is there to say that any of the Islamists who have been threatening Jews and MPs are ‘mates’ of — or in any way linked to — the Mayor of London? If this wasn’t what Anderson meant he had the chance to clarify. No10 urged him to. But he didn’t.

It took Sunak a while to reach his decision. After all, Anderson was his licensed Rottweiler for a while. The two would appear in videos where Sunak would talk about how much he loved the country — it was as if Sunak was fishing for some rebel points. Anderson’s previous explosions had included calling the BBC ‘a safe haven for perverts’ and saying small boat arrivals should be ‘put on a Royal Navy frigate’. This was why he was hired. But this time, if Sunak didn’t fire him he would face an open rebellion from other appalled Tory MPs (including Sajid Javid)– and a wide-open split in his party.

To accuse anyone of being “controlled” by Islamists is not a charge to be made lightly when, just days ago, a slogan calling for genocide was beamed into the House of Commons. Inside it, MPs have been speaking about the intimidation they feel from Islamists. So Anderson was not suspended for flagging the jihadi threat. His offence was to baselessly accuse a Muslim mayor of being ‘controlled’ by jihadis – and later, to refuse to apologise or clarify.

These often-ugly demonstrations are being approved by the police (not Sadiq Khan) because the law guarantees everyone in Britain the right to protest. The only legal grounds for refusing permission is that a protest would pose an unmeetable public order challenge: a very high bar (as it should be in a democracy). Suggesting that Sadiq Khan is approving the protests for anyone – whether his mates or not – is both dishonest and irresponsible (as Chris Hope pointed out in the GB News interview). But Anderson, I suspect, knew this.

Strategic outrage has long been a political tactic, but one that needs to be deployed rarely and judiciously. In 1978, Thatcher caused uproar by telling World In Action that ‘people are really rather afraid that this country might be rather swamped by people with a different culture’. It was helpful outrage – in that it reassured voters worried about immigration that she was on their side. In that very interview, she made that point:-

“If you want good race relations, you have to allay people’s fears on numbers. That’s one thing that’s driving some people to the National Front. We’re a big political party. If we don’t want people to go to extremes – and I don’t – we ourselves must talk about this problem and show that we are prepared to deal with it.”

As Charles Moore observes in his biography, her ‘swamped’ comment ’caused widespread outrage in the broadsheet press and at Westminster and widespread approval in the country’. If you watch 1979 election night coverage, you can see pundits who had been lined up to explain a National Front breakthrough. It never came: Thatcher’s s-word was enough to say: ‘I understand your concern and. don’t think you’re racist.’ Her logic was vindicated. Her robust language and willingness to cause strategic outrage (even in her own ranks) killed support for the far-right. Labour is not exactly above this tactic: David Blunkett repeated it almost verbatim in 2002.

You get the idea. An insider with influence — Anderson, Blunkett, Braverman — positions the established party as radical by saying something outrageous. Anderson offered this. He started his tenure of deputy chairman with a Spectator interview supporting the death penalty, as about a third of voters do. But to pull this strategy off, there has to be a line of decency. When this strays into bigotry, racism or accusing ethnic-minority politicians of split loyalty territory, as Anderson did in GB News interview, it backfires.

The other factor is GB News, a channel that now gives the likes of Anderson a lot of air time and prides itself on having conversations too racy for terrestrial TV. In many cases it provides a much-needed corrective to homogenised TV debate, but the chances of conversation stepping over the line in such interview formats are high (as the Wooton/Fox debacle showed). The presenter closed the Lee Anderson interview by telling him: “you’ve had your Weetabix! Superb stuff!” It’s hard to imagine Andrew Neil ending any of his interviews that way.

So I suspect Anderson knew very well what he was doing but perhaps underestimated the reaction in own party. Ruth Davidson says the ‘Islamist’ remark ‘wouldn’t have been said if [Khan] wasn’t Muslim’. Javid and Nus Ghani agreed. Robert Buckland called it ‘repugnant’. That was fast becoming the Tory consensus: that his jibe lies in the gutter of other anti-religious political insults like accusing Catholics of having dual loyalties, referring to Disraeli as ‘Dejuda‘ or complaining that Thatcher’s Cabinet had ‘more Old Estonians than it does Old Etonians’. Genuinely racist or anti-Muslim slurs are very rare in British public debate – which is why, when they happen, they need to be dealt with quickly.

It is precisely because the Islamist threat is real and casting such a palpable shadow over our democracy (as it did last week) that care is needed. Ministerial-level security is now being extended to backbench MPs, such is the threat against them. To fall into the Islamist trap and start speaking about this as a Muslims vs The Rest – or start accusing Muslim public figures of having split loyalties simply because they are Muslim- is to adopt the jihadist’s playbook. Sunak will have wanted to make clear he will take a single step down this particular path.

Sunak has now released a statement:

The explosion in prejudice and antisemitism since the Hamas terrorist attacks on the 7th October, are as unacceptable as they are un-British. Simply put, antisemitism is racism. And speaking as someone who has experienced racism, I know it when I see it. I am proud to be the first British Asian Prime Minister. But I am even prouder that when it happened, it was not a focus at all. It is what makes me most proud of this country because it is proof that we are the most successful multi-ethnic democracy in the world.When my family came to this country, they retained their heritage and their religion but this did not stop them embracing and serving their new community. They became British and proud of it. This is what we should aspire to. Not the violence, intimidation and intolerance for others we have seen infect our streets recently.”

Anderson, for his part, has now agreed that the Prime Minister had ‘no choice’ but to suspend the whip from him and says he’ll still be loyal. Which makes it all the more puzzling that he didn’t issue the clarification No10 wanted. Still, we can now await the ‘Lee was fired for telling the truth’ chorus from the loonier fringes of the right, people who genuinely do believe that Sadiq Khan is controlled by Islamists. I suspect the general public will step back, see Tories being mad — and all this will threaten to make the coming election defeat even worse.