I was offered a £400,000 Reform Party job but I’ve turned it down to stick with Rishi Sunak, says Lee Anderson
LEE ANDERSON has told warring Tories to “stick with Rishi” – as he talks publicly for the first time about being offered a £400,000 package to defect to Reform UK.
The Tory big beast caused a major headache for the PM just last week when he quit as deputy party chairman so he could rebel over the Rwanda bill.
But sitting down with The Sun on Sunday at his local in his constituency of Ashfield, Notts, Lee, 57, said: “We need to unite as a party. The common enemy is the Labour Party, not our own people.”
He added: “It’s a binary choice between us and the Labour Party.
“It has got to stick with Rishi — of course it has.”
Asked what the alternative to Rishi Sunak would be, Lee said: “Lose.”
He has tough words for the rebels now, but just 12 days ago it was his revolt that was grabbing headlines.
He quit as Tory deputy chairman so he could vote for amendments to toughen up the Rwanda bill.
His shock departure was a massive blow to No10 and fuelled talk of plots to topple Rishi Sunak as PM.
Democracy in action
Earlier this week, Sir Simon Clarke became the first big-name Tory MP to publicly call for the Prime Minister to quit.
But sipping on a double Jameson’s whiskey at the New Cross pub in Sutton- in-Ashfield, Lee chucked a bucket-load of cold water over talk of a coup.
“It’s not a civil war really when it is just one man,” he said, adding that Sir Simon should probably “rein it in a little bit”.
Lee insists he does not regret rebelling over the Rwanda amendments — because it was a point of principle.
But that argument was lost and MPs “need to get behind the party now”.
He added: “When the amendments were defeated, you sort of have to accept that they are right and you’re wrong.
“That’s democracy in action within Parliament. You’ve had your little moment.”
No10 has hinted it would accept Lee back as deputy chairman in the future.
So has he been on the blower to the PM to ask for his old job back?
“It’s an incredible honour, when the oldest political party in the world asks you to do a job like that,” he said.
“But I’m not the sort of man who’s gonna be hanging around the gates at No 10 and pressing my head against the window, looking tearful and sad, and saying, ‘Please give me the job back’, because I’m not — because I’ve got a job here, representing Ashfield.”
Lee is not your typical Tory politician.
He is dubbed the Red Wall Rottweiler for his outspoken views and spicy language.
He was a coal miner — like his dad before him — and a member of Arthur Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers. And he was once a local Labour councillor who worked for the party’s former MP Gloria De Piero.
But he defected to the Tories after Jeremy Corbyn and his leftie rabble took over the party.
Looking back on those final years on the left of politics, he said: “I was in an abusive relationship with the Labour Party for many, many years.
They didn’t want me any more.
“Ultimately, I had to leave.”
Now it is another party trying to convince Lee to defect — Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party.
Around 18 months ago, one figure even offered him “a job for five years on an MP’s salary” of over £86,000 if he defected, he confirmed to a newspaper for the first time. But Lee said no.
Speaking about the offer, he said: “Well, I mean, it’s public knowledge that an offer was made to join, and I didn’t.”
Reform UK party leader Richard Tice has denied the person who made that financial offer spoke for the party at the time.
Mr Tice told The Sun on Sunday: “This was not a Reform thing or an offer”.
But when Lee quit last week as Tory deputy chairman, Mr Tice suggested that Lee come over to his side again.
“I think when I resigned two weeks ago, he [Richard Tice] made some sort of offer on either Twitter or TV,” said Lee. “I’m not sure — I didn’t see it myself. I was only told about it.”
But Lee insisted he would never join.
“The Conservative Party, to be clear, has been incredibly kind to me, has been loyal to me,” he said. “Why would I turn my back on it?”
And Lee reckons talk of a Farage comeback is overblown.
“Nigel Farage has been probably the most influential politician ever not to sit in Parliament. There’s no doubt about that,” he said.
Rainbow flags
“But does somebody like Farage want to be sat there [as an MP] on a Friday afternoon, talking to people about litter, and wheelie bins and the smell of weed coming from next door?”
But Lee saves his sharpest tongue- lashing for Labour.
Most Labour MPs “wouldn’t get a job in a chip shop . . . and that’s no disrespect to chip shop workers,” he said.
On Sir Keir Starmer, he added: “We don’t know what he stands for — nobody does. Even he doesn’t.”
The bland Labour leader just doesn’t pass “the pint test”, he says.
“Would you want a pint with Starmer? Could you actually stay awake with him?”
So would Rishi Sunak — Britain’s most famous teetotaller — pass that test?
“Say I’ve got a missus and kids and a little business like this pub and I had to go away for six months — and had to get someone to look after it.
“If you let Rishi look after it you would probably come back and business would be flourishing. Your family would be safe. And all the books would tally.
“Now if you let Keir Starmer look after it for six months, your wife would have died of boredom or p***ed off somewhere, and you’d have about 25 different sex toilets and rainbow flags behind the bar.”