Lee Anderson’s defection from the Tories to Reform UK was hardly a surprise. In fact, it seemed almost inevitable. But that Anderson rose to the position he did within the Conservative party to become deputy chairman, before flouncing out, raises questions about Sunak’s political judgement. Anderson became an emblem of the Red Wall, yet is he really representative of voters from the north?
Sunak’s superficial reading of Anderson led him to think that he could be a bridge to the Red Wall
Anderson’s blunt language has powered his brief career as a Conservative MP. Because he said undiplomatic, unwise or unhelpful things, and because his background was unimpeachably and authentically working class, Rishi Sunak and his advisers chose him as a kind of avatar for ‘Red Wall’ voters.
The Prime Minister made a bad calculation. His own background – Winchester, Oxford, Stanford Business School, Goldman Sachs – gave him no insight into the former Labour strongholds whose support he inherited. His superficial reading of Anderson led him to think that the Ashfield MP could be a bridge to them. By promoting and seeming to listen to Anderson, Sunak would show that he understood the concerns of the Red Wall.
I see why the Prime Minister thought Anderson would be a Red Wall envoy, but I also understand why he was wrong. Anderson always had a whiff of a Southerner’s idea of what someone from the provinces was like. He had a history of troubling remarks, made crude quips about Travellers, and talked about sending would-be migrants ‘straight back the same day’. But this was simplistic and crude rather than authentic. In truth he has proved clumsy, showing himself not especially able or persuasive.
What his Tory party appointment showed was what Downing Street was missing. It had failed to grasp that many Red Wall voters are anxious and unsettled, feeling economically disadvantaged and marginalised, seeing diminishing public services and fraying institutions. They are neither stupid nor simplistic: they see change and understand it is not only national but global. But they feel it leaving them behind and neglecting their interests. When they articulate these concerns, they are often dismissed as old-fashioned or outmoded, a nuisance and an obstacle to a wider transformation to which they have not subscribed.
Positive generalisations are as unhelpful as negative ones. Yet there is a frustration for me, as a Conservative, because lack of curiosity has been a missed opportunity. Some of the values common in Red Wall areas – resilience, enterprise, patriotism, quiet compassion – offered an opening to a right-of-centre political identity. The 2019 general election saw tribal political loyalties stretched almost to breaking point, but the dismissive assumption that someone like Lee Anderson can be the Red Wall’s champion has allowed those loyalties slowly to recover.
It is likely that the Red Wall will revert to the Labour party, even if unenthusiastically, at the forthcoming election. Anderson will probably lose Ashfield, Labour from the 1950s till 2019, but will blame it on the two-party system rather than failings by him or Reform. To an extent, that is a consequence of neglect by the Conservative party, of the leadership’s lack of insight and interest. It could have been different.
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