AFTER months of turmoil, in-fighting, plummeting poll ratings and no sign of an economic headwind to take the (very expensive) heat out of the rising cost of living, the inevitable finally happened.
Lee Anderson, an MP elected on a Conservative ticket, decided enough was enough and defected to join Reform UK.
The former deputy Tory party chairman — who lost the Conservative whip last month over his comments about Islamists controlling London mayor Sadiq Khan — announced he was joining Richard Tice’s party because, he said, the current “Parliament doesn’t seem to understand” what British people want.
The news wouldn’t have come as a total surprise to Downing Street.
Everyone knew Anderson had been in talks with Reform.
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Yet, while not a surprise, the MP’s departure has sent shockwaves through the heart of No 10 and among his colleagues on the Tory benches as well.
They know that, whether some of them like it or not, Anderson is a very popular figure among Tory members and voters, who inundated the party with support for him after he was suspended.
So when Anderson said yesterday that he wants “his country back” and believes Reform UK is the party best placed to achieve that, he is far from alone.
He has been called “controversial” and even “Islamophobic”, when in fact nothing he says is remotely controversial to most voters.
Indeed, he is speaking FOR most increasingly disaffected Tory voters.
Calling for lower taxes, cuts to immigration, tougher policing and deporting of Channel migrants — all of which Anderson has done — are not contentious things to say in most homes, pubs or workplaces.
While metropolitan types who sneer at the man they call “30p Lee” (a nickname given after he said lessons in how to cook low-cost meals would help people more than going to food banks) are seen as patronising do-gooders who have no idea how the other half lives.
Rishi Sunak can’t bury his head in the sand and pretend Anderson’s defection doesn’t matter.
Because this story isn’t actually about just one MP, it’s about EVERY Tory MP who faces defeat at the election and feels they have nothing left to lose.
And the question every Tory MP is asking themselves today is this: “What is my best chance of survival — both for my party and for my own career?”
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They have three options.
The first is to “stick with Rishi” — keep everything crossed that something happens to turn the polls around and that much-vaunted “secret Tories” decide Keir Starmer would be even worse than what we’ve got now and come out in their droves on election day.
That’s hair-raisingly optimistic when you are 27 points behind in the polls.
The second option is to follow in Anderson’s footsteps and defect to Reform in the hope disaffected voters will flock to the party even without Nigel Farage leading them on the campaign trail.
That’s also quite a risk given Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system which sees smaller parties’ support massively under-represented in the Commons.
The third option is even more drastic.
It carries the highest risk but potentially offers the biggest reward if — and it’s a VERY big “if” — it all goes to plan.
To orchestrate yet another Tory leadership coup and elect another new leader, the sixth Prime Minister since the Conservatives took office in 2010.
Yes, I know that sounds crazy.
That’s because it is.
In ordinary times, any strategist would tell you it is insane to ditch yet another leader, and hope against hope that the polls will turn, just months before polling day.
Yet many Tory MPs feel they have nothing left to lose.
And Sunak is in exactly the same boat.
If he has any sense, he will learn the lesson that David Cameron did when confronted with the threat of Ukip, a previous incarnation of Reform UK.
He promised an EU referendum to win back wavering Eurosceptic MPs and voters.
The PM needs to offer disaffected Tories what they expect to get from a Conservative government and that, quite simply, is everything Anderson is calling for.
Right now, Sunak faces leading his party into electoral annihilation.
He may have just lost a former MP, but that might be just the least of his troubles in the days, weeks and months to come.
His remaining MPs have nothing left to lose — and everything to play for.
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A-BOMB OSCARS A BLAST
THE Oscars were mired in an abject LACK of controversy this week when the best film actually won.
I know! I was as surprised as you were.
Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, swept the board with seven awards including the biggies of Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Supporting Actor.
The movie is a story about a white man dubbed “the father of the atom bomb” and it is directed by a white man and stars lots of other white men, yet it won despite all the diversity quotas a film has to meet even to be nominated for an Academy Award these days.
I didn’t think that was even allowed any more!
Let’s be honest, normally the biggest Oscar winner is required to be a worthy borefest of wokedom that no one has paid to see.
Oppenheimer – rather aptly – blew that old rule into smithereens.
BIN OFF WOKE WASTE
I’VE just received my latest council tax bill and – surprise, surprise – it’s gone up again.
The services they provide haven’t got any better (we still have to wait two weeks between rubbish collections) but we’re all going to be paying more for the privilege. Lucky us!
Councils say they are struggling financially yet they have been on a woke spending spree for the past few years with our hard-earned cash.
Almost £52million has been spent by local authorities on highly paid “equality, diversity and inclusion” staff whose job it is to tell everyone else that they’re racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and anything else that springs to mind.
Call me old-fashioned, but I think most people just want their local council to stop being binphobic and bring back weekly rubbish collections.
RAYNER HARD TO MISTAKE
ANGELA RAYNER has serious questions to answer after a former neighbour, now aged 83, branded the MP a “f***ing liar” for claiming she did not live with her husband before she was first elected.
Labour’s deputy leader has insisted she acted lawfully when she sold her former council house in Stockport for a £48,500 profit.
That is despite claims in Lord Ashcroft’s new book, Red Queen, that she hadn’t lived there for years and was therefore liable for capital gains tax on the sale.
If Angela Rayner lived next door to me, I’m pretty sure I would know about it.
All those flowing red locks spotted over the garden wall, the shouts of “Tory scum!” at the Six O’clock News heard through the living room wall every night – let’s face it, she would be hard not to notice.
And even harder to forget.
BEEB’s BLEAK NOUS
WHAT is it with the BBC and its insatiable need to do this country down?
This week’s instalment was a press release about a Radio 4 series featuring new adaptations of Charles Dickens novels Hard Times, Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend, which captured the grim misery of life for the poor in 19th century England.
Naturally, the author of the Beeb’s press release couldn’t resist getting a dig in on life for the poor in the here and now, writing: “The well-loved writer’s critique of Victorian society has particularly striking parallels with life in Britain today.”
Does it really?
Does life in modern-day Britain really compare in any way to the gruelling life of workhouses and orphanages long before the creation of the welfare state, the NHS and state schools?
Maybe the BBC should refer that claim to its Verify fact-checking unit and see what it thinks?
VINYL records have returned to the basket of goods used by the Office for National Statistics to track prices and work out the rising cost of living – 32 years after they were taken out.
I can still vividly remember saving up my pocket money to buy my first seven-inch single – Abba’s Take A Chance On Me – in 1977 at the local Woolworths, while I doubt most youngsters today will recall their first download on Spotify.
