Iain Dale has warned the Conservative Party that “if you sleep with a dog, you tend to get fleas” in a brutal appraisal of the Lee Anderson Islamophobia row.
The LBC broadcaster and Telegraph columnist said the former Tory party chair had been a “serial offender”, and suggested Rishi Sunak was facing the consequences of recruiting Anderson to “shake things up”.
Anderson had the Tory whip removed over the weekend after he chose not to apologise for saying “Islamists” had “control” over London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, who is Muslim.
The incident has escalated into a major row over how the government has handled the issue.
Sunak has claimed Anderson is not racist or Islamophobic, but security minister Tom Tugendhat told MPs he was ousted from the party because of “anti-Muslim hatred”.
Anderson has remained unrepentant – and appears to have shifted his position. After initially accepting the suspension, he told Channel 5 News on Tuesday the PM had “made a mistake”.
On the BBC’s Politics Live, Dale said: “I try, as a 61-year-old white, middle-aged male, to put myself in the position of an ordinary British Muslim who hears these comments.
“And I if I was an ordinary British Muslim, I would consider them Islamophobic without a shadow of a doubt.
“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck.
But I don’t know why we’re all so surprised at this because he’s a serial offender.
“Remember he told asylum seekers to f-off back to France.
He should have been sacked for that.
“Instead, Number 10 came out and supported him so I don’t know why everybody’s so surprised.
“He was appointed to shake things up. He was appointed as the prime minister’s bit of northern rough, and I’m afraid if you if you sleep with a dog, you tend to get fleas.”
These were my comments about Lee Anderson on Politics Live this lunchtime. Let’s just say I didn’t sit on the fence. “Is he Islamophobic? If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.” pic.twitter.com/ZQDYE94mzf
— Iain Dale ⚒️????????.???????? (@IainDale) February 27, 2024
He added: “Imagine if somebody had said about, say, Michael Gove being controlled by the Jewish lobby.
“Imagine if someone had said that? Do you think they would have been allowed to stay in the party?
“He’d have had the whip suspended. But that would have been curtains for anybody. And so should this be.”
Writing in the Evening Standard newspaper, Khan said Anderson’s comments had “poured petrol on the fire” of hatred against Muslims.
He said some Conservatives were adopting “a deliberate, dangerous political strategy – a strategy to weaponise anti-Muslim prejudice for electoral gain”.
