Lee Anderson Suspended By Tories After Refusing To Apologise For 'Islamophobic' Comments

Lee Anderson has been suspended by the Tories after he refused to apologise for claiming Islamists have “got control of” Sadiq Khan.

The party’s former deputy chairman was stripped of the Conservative whip following a furious political backlash to his comments.

Appearing on GB News on Friday afternoon, Anderson said the London mayor, who is Muslim, had “given our capital city away to his mates”.

Labour accused him of Islamophobia, while senior Tories also condemned the comments.

Senior Conservative officials initially tried to defend Anderson, with a party source telling HuffPost UK he “was simply making the point that the mayor ... has abjectly failed to get a grip on the appalling Islamist marches we have seen in London recently”.

But this afternoon, a spokesperson for chief whip Simon Hart said: “Following his refusal to apologise for comments made yesterday, the chief whip has suspended the Conservative whip from Lee Anderson.” 

Responding to the news, Labour chair Anneliese Dodds said: “Lee Anderson’s comments were unambiguously Islamophobic, divisive and damaging.

“It is right that he has had the whip removed, but the suggestion that Lee Anderson would have retained the confidence of the prime minister, simply if he apologised, is deeply concerning.

“These views are wrong, full stop, and there shouldn’t be conditions on removing them from your party.”

Dodds also repeated Labour’s call for Liz Truss to also lose the Tory whip over comments she made at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington DC.

The former prime minister claimed the Financial Times was “friends of the deep state”, which had worked to bring her time in Downing Street to an end.

Dodds said: “Labour is calling on the prime minister to also remove the whip from Liz Truss for her egregious and embarrassing comments about our country on the international stage and if he doesn’t then he is not serious about ridding the Conservatives of radical and dangerous views.”