Lee Anderson mocked for saying 'I want my country back' as he defects to Reform UK which weeks ago he slammed

Former Tory deputy chairman has done a remarkable U-turn from late January when he categorically denied that he was going to jump ship
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Lee Anderson has been mocked after defecting to Reform UK despite just weeks ago vowing not to do so.

The former Tory deputy chairman declared in a tetchy press conference to announce that he was jumping ship: “Like millions of people up and down the country, all I want is my country back."

But Shadow justice minister Alex Cunningham, Labour MP for Stockton North, was quick to deride the Ashfield MP who was once a Labour councillor, before becoming a Tory MP and now defecting to Reform.

Mr Cunningham tweeted: “So Anderson wants his country back - from whom? The Romans, the Vikings, the Norman's, the Scots or someone else from our wonderfully diverse community?

“Our country belongs to us all.”

Mr Anderson admits to having been on a political journey and says his latest decision came after much “soul searching”.

But the former senior Tory has done a remarkable U-turn from late January when he categorically denied that he was going to defect.

The Telegraph reported on January 24 that asked if there was “any conceivable world” in which he might defect, the Ashfield MP responded: “No.”

He continued that he owed a “debt of gratitude” to the Conservatives, even if he does not “agree with everything we do”, because “it was them that gave me the job”.

Explaining his apparent loyalty, he added: “It was them that financially backed me, it’s them that’s protected me, it’s them that’s given me a political home.

“So why would I knife them in the back?”

Just weeks earlier, he was laying into Reform party leader Richard Tice, branding him a “pound shop Nigel Farage”.

He told him to “pipe down” in his attacks on Rishi Sunak’s government.

“I get on with Richard reasonably well, but I would say this – he’s not Nigel Farage, he’s not the leader that Nigel Farage was,” Mr Anderson told GB News.

In withering comments, he then said: “In fact, I agree with one of my constituents, who said to me earlier today he is a bit of a pound shop Nigel Farage.”

The then Tory deputy chairman added: “I think he’s a pound shop Nigel Farage and every time he opens his mouth recently on whichever media platform, he is coming across as Reform’s answer to Diane Abbott. He’s just saying ridiculous things.”

Mr Anderson, who is paid £100,000 a year to host a show on GB News, was deputy chairman of the Tory party from February 2023 until January, when he resigned to rebel against the Prime Minister’s Rwanda Bill, but did not vote against it in the end as Labour MPs were laughing at him in the voting lobbies.

Speaking on GB News recently about immigration, he said: “Reform is not the answer. It leaves the door open for Sir Keir Starmer to get into No10 and undo all the hard work we have tried to do so far.”

Former Tory party chairman Sir Jake Berry tweeted the clip, adding: “I agree with Lee.”

Mr Anderson was suspended as a Tory MP at the end of February after an outburst in which he claimed Islamists had “got control of Khan and they've got control of London… He's actually given our capital city away to his mates”.

The comments were widely condemned as racist and Islamophobic.

Rishi Sunak and other ministers stopped short of describing the words as such, instead saying they were “wrong”, which was seen as leaving the door open for Mr Anderson to return as a Tory MP in time for the general election, widely expected in the autumn.

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