Lisa McKenzie

The rise (and fall?) of Lee Anderson

(Credit: Getty images)

It has taken only three years for Lee Anderson to rise from fledgling Tory MP to deputy chairman of his party. It’s a remarkable achievement for a man who, until 2018, was a Labour politician. Since his election, Anderson has frequently hit the headlines – not least after an interview in The Spectator earlier this month in which he backed the death penalty. ‘100 per cent effective,’ he said of the ultimate punishment. For that intervention, Anderson was promptly lambasted and denounced as ‘thick’ and monstrous – but also won plenty of support. It’s clear Anderson is a politician loved and loathed in equal measure. But it’s difficult to understand him without finding out about the town he came from. 

Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, the seat Anderson represents, is a staunch working-class community. Once full of coal mines and factories, the area – which I grew up in and where all of my family still live – sits in the heart of the Red Wall. So how did a man who worked in the mines here and was a long-time member of the Labour party become the Tory party’s deputy chairman? It’s not a short story – and, despite the claims of some commentators, it didn’t start with Brexit. Nor has it ended with the landslide Tory victory that swept through Labour’s heartlands in 2019, bringing Anderson and his Red Wall colleagues to power.

Towns like Ashfield have still not recovered: they are limping on, used by both Labour and Conservatives

Anderson is the illegitimate political child of Margaret Thatcher, John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. All of these politicians would wash their hands of any blame in the rise of Anderson. But there is no way of understanding why a politician like Anderson has been so successful, without coming to terms with the last two generations of British politics.

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Written by
Lisa McKenzie

Dr Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic. She grew up in Sutton-in-Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, and used to work in a factory. Her PhD was awarded by the University of Nottingham and she writes about inequalities in the British class system

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