Lee Anderson (born 6 January 1967) is a British
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization i ...
politician who has been the
Member of Parliament
A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...
(MP) for
Ashfield,
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...
since
2019
File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
. Prior to his parliamentary career he was a
Labour
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth, the delivery of a baby
* Labour (human activity), or work
** Manual labour, physical work
** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer
** Organized labour and the labour ...
councillor in Ashfield and later a Conservative councillor in
Mansfield
Mansfield is a market town and the administrative centre of Mansfield District in Nottinghamshire, England. It is the largest town in the wider Mansfield Urban Area (followed by Sutton-in-Ashfield). It gained the Royal Charter of a market tow ...
after defecting to the party in 2018.
Early life and career
Anderson was born in
Nottinghamshire
Nottinghamshire (; abbreviated Notts.) is a landlocked county in the East Midlands region of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west. The traditi ...
, attending John Davies Primary School and
Ashfield School. His father was a coal miner. Anderson worked as a coal miner for 10 years and then volunteered for
Citizens Advice
Citizens AdviceCitizens Advice is the operating name of The National Association of Citizens Advice Bureaux which is the umbrella charity for a wider network of local advice centres. The abbreviation CitA is sometimes used to refer to this nation ...
for another decade.
Local political career
Anderson was a longtime member of the
Labour Party and was elected as a councillor in the 2015
Ashfield District Council Ashfield may refer to:
People
* Ashfield (surname)
Places
Australia
* Ashfield, New South Wales, a suburb of Sydney
** Municipality of Ashfield, a former local government area in Sydney
** Electoral district of Ashfield, a former electoral dist ...
election, representing Huthwaite and Brierley ward. He was suspended in February 2018 by the local branch of the Labour Party 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". The following month, Anderson defected to the
Conservative Party
The Conservative Party is a name used by many political parties around the world. These political parties are generally right-wing though their exact ideologies can range from center-right to far-right.
Political parties called The Conservative P ...
which he stated was a response to the "takeover" of the Labour Party by the "
hard-left" particularly through the left-wing political organisation
Momentum
In Newtonian mechanics, momentum (more specifically linear momentum or translational momentum) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. If is an object's mass an ...
. He was elected as a Conservative councillor on the
Mansfield District Council
Mansfield District is a local government district in Nottinghamshire, England. Its council is based in the town of Mansfield. The district is bounded by the districts of Ashfield, Newark and Sherwood and Gedling, as well as the Derbyshire distr ...
representing the Oakham ward between 2019 and 2021.
Parliamentary career
In July 2019, he was selected as the Conservative candidate for
Ashfield for the
2019 general election. He supported
Brexit
Brexit (; a portmanteau of "British exit") was the withdrawal of the United Kingdom (UK) from the European Union (EU) at 23:00 GMT on 31 January 2020 (00:00 1 February 2020 CET).The UK also left the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC or ...
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. 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". The CEO of
Full Fact
Full Fact is a British charity, based in London, which checks and corrects facts reported in the news as well as claims which circulate on social media.
History and structure
Full Fact was founded in 2009 by businessman Michael Samuel, the c ...
, the fact-checking organisation, stated that "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". He was also criticised for calling for "nuisance tenants" in a council estate to be evicted into tents in a field and forced to pick vegetables. The Labour Party compared his idea to "forced labour camps". Anderson was also one of three Conservative Party candidates investigated by the party over claims of
antisemitism
Antisemitism (also spelled anti-semitism or anti-Semitism) is hostility to, prejudice towards, or discrimination against Jews. A person who holds such positions is called an antisemite. Antisemitism is considered to be a form of racism.
Antis ...
during the election campaign. The investigation was opened on the grounds that he was an active member of a
Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...
group in which other members supported
Tommy Robinson and promoted
George Soros
George Soros ( name written in eastern order), (born György Schwartz, August 12, 1930) is a Hungarian-American businessman and philanthropist. , he had a net worth of US$8.6 billion, Note that this site is updated daily. having donated mo ...
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.
Anderson was elected as MP for Ashfield in the 2019 general election with a majority of 5,733. The seat had previously been represented by Labour's
Gloria De Piero
Gloria De Piero (born 21 December 1972) is a British television and radio presenter, and former Labour Party politician.
Prior to her political career, she was the political editor of GMTV. A member of the Labour Party, she was first electe ...
who stood down at the election. He had previously worked as her office manager for five years.
[ Anderson was the first Conservative to represent the constituency since the 1977 by-election.
He is a member of the ]Common Sense Group
The Common Sense Group is an informal group of Conservative MPs in the United Kingdom who advocate a broad range of ideals that they think the Conservative Party and the country ought to be following.
The group was inspired by the euro-sceptic ...
, 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
Colonialism is a practice or policy of control by one people or power over other people or areas, often by establishing colonies and generally with the aim of economic dominance. In the process of colonisation, colonisers may impose their relig ...
and National Trust
The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...
properties, including links with historic slavery, Anderson was among the signatories of a letter by the group in ''The Telegraph
''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are popular names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include:
Australia
* ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaide, South Australia, publ ...
'' in November 2020. In the letter, the signatories accused the National Trust of being "coloured by cultural Marxist
The term "Cultural Marxism" refers to a far-right antisemitic conspiracy theory which claims that Western Marxism is the basis of continuing academic and intellectual efforts to subvert Western culture. The conspiracy theory misrepresents the ...
dogma". In response the All-Party Parliamentary Group Against Antisemitism issued a briefing paper to all Conservative MPs warning against using the term "cultural Marxism" as it may "inadvertently" act as a "dog-whistle for the far-right". In the same month, Anderson attended a breakfast meeting at Downing Street with Prime Minister Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (; born 19 June 1964) is a British politician, writer and journalist who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He previously served as F ...
and five other Conservative MPs. He later tested positive for COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
forcing those who attended to isolate.
Anderson announced via social media in June 2021 that he would not watch any England national football team
The England national football team has represented England in international Association football, football since the first international match in 1872. It is controlled by The Football Association (FA), the governing body for football in Engl ...
matches at Euro 2020
The 2020 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as UEFA Euro 2020 (stylised as UEFA EURO 2020) or simply Euro 2020, was the 16th UEFA European Championship, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Europe ...
in protest at the players' decision to take the knee (a symbolic gesture against racism) before matches. He stated his opposition was because he felt that the action risked "alienating traditional supporters" and supported Black Lives Matter
Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...
which in his opinion was a "political movement whose core principles aim to undermine our very way of life". In the same month, in a debate on the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill
The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that was introduced by the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice. It gives more power to the police, criminal justice, and sentencing legi ...
, Anderson accused the Traveller community in Ashfield of thievery stating, "...the Gypsy encampments that we are talking about in places such as Ashfield are not the traditional, old-fashioned Gypsies sat there playing the mandolin, flogging lucky heather and telling fortunes. The Travellers I am talking about are more likely to be seen leaving your garden shed at 3 o’clock in the morning, probably with your lawnmower and half of your tools. That happens every single time they come to Ashfield".[ In November 2021, Anderson voiced his support for offshore processing of asylum applications in the ]Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands (; es, Islas Malvinas, link=no ) is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and about from Cape Dubouzet ...
and lobbied an immigration minister on the subject. In May 2022, he falsely stated that the majority of migrants crossing the English Channel illegally were economic migrant
An economic migrant is someone who emigrates from one region to another, including crossing international borders, seeking an improved standard of living, because the conditions or job opportunities in the migrant's own region are insufficient. Th ...
s. When told that the Home Office had concluded that the majority were refugees, he blamed the "old failing asylum system" and accused the migrants of lying to falsely seek asylum.
He was one of 99 Conservative MPs to vote against Covid passes in England in December 2021.
In May 2022, Anderson was criticised by opposition politicians, Conservative politicians, food poverty campaigners and charities for suggesting in parliament that there wasn't "massive use for food banks" in the UK and what use there was related to a lack of teaching on budgeting and cooking. He also invited opposition MPs to visit a foodbank in his constituency where he claimed that meals could be made for 30p a day and that also provided a mandatory teaching course to its users. Anderson's comments earned him the nickname "30p Lee". The founder of the foodbank Simon Martin commented that the teaching course was optional and stated that "people do know how to cook, obviously, because people have been eating and surviving before we've been intervening with food parcels" but that providing free guidance on economic cooking may help. The 30p figure came from a batch-cooking session made by a team led by a professional chef which stretched an initial £50.24 shop into 172 meals. Martin commented, "It illustrates the point you can produce healthy meals heaplybut it's not in the capacity of every family, and not easy to replicate in every household. It presupposes you're buying in bulk, cooking with big catering trays and have the storage". Anderson later commented via social media that his comments had been misinterpreted. Food journalist and activist Jack Monroe
Jack Monroe (born 17 March 1988) is a British food writer, journalist and activist known for campaigning on poverty issues, particularly hunger relief. She initially rose to prominence by writing a blog titled ''A Girl Called Jack'' (now r ...
hinted at legal action against Anderson after he commented in an interview that "She's taking money off some of the most vulnerable people in society and making an absolute fortune on icthe back of people".
The following month, he claimed that Prime Minister Boris Johnson was the victim of "a witch hunt led by the BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
" shortly after the results of a Conservative vote of confidence in Johnson's leadership was announced. In July 2022, Anderson withdrew his support for Johnson over his handling of the
. After Badenoch was eliminated, he supported
. Later that month, while on
and Izzard's transgender journey, Anderson stated he “wouldn’t follow him (Izzard) into the toilets”.
Anderson is married to Sinead and has two sons.