21 March 2024 , 13:36
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Keir Starmer has made a £50 bet that Lee Anderson will lose his seat at the general election.
The Labour leader shook on the promise with a Mirror columnist as he visited our newspaper's HQ this week. He said Mr Anderson had "no future" after switching from Labour, to the Conservatives, and now Reform UK.
Ex-deputy Tory chairman Mr Anderson was suspended by Rishi Sunak after suggesting London Mayor Sadiq Khan was controlled by “Islamists” and had "given our capital city away to his mates". He defected to Reform, formerly the Brexit Party, despite saying it was "not a proper political party" and branding its leader Richard Tice a "pound shop" Nigel Farage.
Asked by the Mirror's Paul Routledge if he thinks Mr Anderson will retain his seat in Ashfield at an election, Mr Starmer said: "No, I don't." Pressed if he'd bet on it, Mr Starmer shook his hand. Referring to Piers Morgan's £1,000 bet with Mr Sunak over getting flights off to Rwanda, Mr Routledge said: "I'm a poor man's Piers, so fifty quid." Mr Starmer responded: "Fifty quid."
The Labour leader shook on the promise with Mirror columnist Paul Routledge as he visited our newspaper's HQ (Ian Vogler / Daily Mirror)Speaking about Mr Anderson, who was first a Labour supporter before joining the Tories, Mr Starmer said: "Look, he's drifted from the Labour Party into the Tory Party, to the right of the Tory Party, now out the door to the right of Reform. There is no future in that.
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"Reform doesn't provide the answers to the very many challenges that people are facing across the country. We intend to take that positive case and to take him on and beat him and I'm sure we will because he hasn't got all the answers that the country needs. You can't run a government, you can't envisage a future, that is just built on divide, divide, divide.
"And what he said about Islamophobia, or his Islamophobic comments, are just totally unacceptable... they tell a story about a right of politics, which is rotten now."
Mr Anderson became the first Reform UK MP when he defected in March, a decision he said he made because "I want my country back." Standing alongside party leader Mr Tice at a Westminster press conference, he said: "Reform UK has offered me the chance to speak out in Parliament on behalf of millions of people up and down the country who feel that they're not being listened to."