[Tubby Isaacs]

Has earned his own thread.

First up (apologies if already posted), but a disastrous appearance on Radio Nottingham, where his famous straight talking goes astray when the interviewer brings up his faked campaign video. Lee instead keeps asking the interviewer if she's ever told a lie. Repeatedly. When she says, well, people tell lies for all sorts of reasons like to spare people's feelings, but she's never faked a campaign video, Lee almost shouts Gotcha! When he belatedly addresses the video he said he won in the general election, so the electorate approve of his video.

Lee ends by saying they need to put the whole ten minute interview up or else it's not fair. You can almost hear him thinking "I know, I'll say I was taken out of context!"

[mattomac]

There are three reasons I can think of why he was appointed.

A) They believe what Penny Mordaunt alluded to that all working class people from the north are thick and by making him Deputy Chair that this means they will all go and vote in their 1,000s for a Tory party that promised a moon on a stick and delivered nothing.

B) He appeals to a certain seat demographic that they are in danger of losing, there are some seats they will hold that they weren’t expecting and lose some they expected to win, Hartlepool is one I can think that might stick.

C) He needs a target when it all goes tits up May so needs someone to blame so let him spout his garbage dismiss it in comment and when May happens and it goes shit they can blame Anderson and say his comments were unhelpful and yet keep Hands in place.

I’m under no allusion A exist but the issue from my auntie who is one is GP waiting times and NHS waiting times, cut the head off some terrorists isn’t going to bring that down. Twitter proclaims oh what a genius but the issue is it’s too white, it’s too southern and it’s too middle class, it’s reflective of a idea that may have passed.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Nicked from Twitter.

Just expect fairy stories from the Tory central office.

It's now run by Hands-Anderson.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Or should that be Hands-Cretin-Anderson?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Who wrote The Emperor's New Clothes...

[Abernathy]

Opinion from the estimable Ian Dunt :

OPINION about that effin' moron Lee Anderson (and quite restained in my opinion):
By Ian Dunt
i columnist February 8, 2023 3:28 pm (Updated February 9, 2023 11:04 am)
Lee Anderson’s appointment is a Tory attempt to grind us down, but we need to stay angry.
He is the latest example of a figure on the Tory benches who has managed to reach the upper echelons of public life specifically by being stupid.
Anderson was not given this position despite his stupidity. He was given it because of his stupidity.
If you’ve somehow managed to avoid Lee Anderson, the new vice-chair of the Conservative Party, here’s what you need to know.
His inadequacies appear so extensive that to simply list them without any additional details would require the rest of this column, but the skeletal version goes like this. He was suspended from the local Labour group in 2018 for trying to use boulders to deter a traveller encampment, at which point he defected to the Conservatives.
During the 2019 general election campaign he was caught setting up one of his mates to act like a voter he had just encountered during a TV interview. “Make out you know who I am,” he told him on the phone, unaware that he had left his mic on, “that you know I’m the candidate, but not a friend.” That friend then spent most of the subsequent interview talking about how he wanted people to be flogged with a cat-o-nine tails.
He boycotted the England team because they took the knee. He claims people can cook a meal for 30p. He says nurses use foodbanks because they can’t budget. He has used the salary and relationship status of his own staff to corroborate his arguments.
He is, in short, an imbecile of the very highest order. I first noticed him during a Commons debate on Priti Patel’s policing bill in March 2021. Halfway through, Anderson rose to deliver his contribution. “Before lockdown,” he said, “residents would often see me sat in the front of a police car going out on patrol and supporting our police, which is in sharp contrast to some Labour politicians, who have been seen in the back of police cars on the way to the station.”
It was like some kind of moron had broken into the Commons and started shouting deranged absurdities at the people in front of him. The Chamber sat in silence. The Tory MPs around Anderson looked as incredulous as the Labour MPs opposite him. And then the horrible reality dawned. He wasn’t some lunatic intruder. He was an elected member of parliament, tasked with scrutinising legislation and representing his constituents. His mere presence seemed to corrode the solemnity of the institution around him. It marked a decline in the status of the country, of a disintegration into sniggering degeneracy.
You can imagine the reasons why Greg Hands was made chairman: he has dual American/British nationality, lives in London, has a German wife, speaks five European languages and is an ally of George Osborne. In other words, he is more than a bit Remainy. Anderson presumably worked as a counterbalancing sop to the Tory reactionary wing.
But of course the reverse is also true. Anderson’s appointment negates the seriousness which Sunak claims to represent. His reshuffle made some perfectly sensible changes to departmental responsibilities. To have orchestrated all that and then made Anderson deputy chair is like carefully constructing a model railway set and then covering it in custard pie.
Anderson is sold as a “Red Wall rottweiler” – someone who will say the things other people won’t say, who feels free to spit bile about travellers, food bank users and trans people without any moral restraint, or even basic politeness, which might guide many civilised people.
The “Rottweiler” role used to refer to a figure who would savagely attack the other party. It was used for Conservative Chris Grayling once and Labour’s Damian McBride. Now it is something different. It is a kind of talismanic tribalism, where you install people not for their positive attributes, but for the extent to which they upset those who disagree with them. It is the mentality of own-the-libs, where even very senior positions are occupied by those whose primary function is to outrage those their opponents don’t like. This is the reason figures like Jacob Rees-Mogg and Nadine Dorries were put in government by Boris Johnson.
Once upon a time, it worked, albeit on its own terms. We did get angry. It felt as if Britain was sinking into the sea, as if the basic standards of national life were slowly submerging under the water line. But now, after years of it, it’s honestly hard to get too cross about it. It smells more like desperation than vandalism. They have no new tricks. They know they’re doomed, that they are slumping towards electoral oblivion, and yet all they have are the same old tired and mendacious tactical gambits.
But in truth, our resignation is not healthy. Our exhaustion is not useful. It would be better for us if the own-the-libs approach continued to work. Because we should be angry. We should be indignant. The sum result of these sorts of appointments is that we stop functioning as anything remotely approaching a serious country.
It’s not about what Anderson is or what he says. It’s about why he was appointed. He was not given this position despite his stupidity. He was given it because of his stupidity. He is the latest example of a figure on the Tory benches who has managed to reach the upper echelons of public life specifically by being stupid. And that, in the end, is the real damage.
We live in a political era where the rulebook of success is based, in no small part, on performative meanness and ignorance. Anderson is totemic of it. And by validating him, Sunak has lost any right to be considered a serious political figure.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

[Arrowhead]

I think Ian Dunt has hit the nail squarely on the head - Anderson's appointment is pure Own The Libs nonsense, designed to enflame people such as those of us who post on this forum. To drink our Libtard tears, or whatever such crap they are convincing themselves of this week.

Dunt is also correct about his appointment having more than a hint of desperation to it. It really does feel that the Tories, or at least a significant section of the party, are slowly giving up on the next GE. I have no idea who the Labour equivalent to Anderson is (Burgon?), but I cannot imagine any circumstance whatsoever whereby Starmer would appoint such a character to this sort of vital party role.

[Tubby Isaacs]

As Sam Freedman says, you keep hearing “they’ve got Starmer where they want him”. By which they presumably don’t mean 23 points in the lead.

[mattomac]

Saw some trot out the “genius move” like every other genius move that has led to Labour 20pts plus ahead.

[Watchman]

I see the spin is; “It’s pure snobbery picking on Anderson”, and “he’s a single dad, been a miner, lived in the real world”. Angela Rayner anyone?

[Andy McDandy]

Working class Tory: aspirational.
Working class Labour: loser.

Also, mining is big tough and manly work. Rayner was pouring cups of tea in a nursing home or something. Whatever, women's work.

[Yug]

Tough and manly work excuses a lot of things, does it? Lorry driving was considered tough and manly, with added Yorkie Bars. Didn't stop Peter Sutcliffe being regarded as a cunt.

Whatever his background, nothing can be used to mitigate Anderson's cuntishness.

[RandomElement]

Regarding the Radio Nottingham interview, I think he was trying to come across as a Tory Mick Lynch. But failed as he made himself look like an idiot trying to compare everyday white lies to deliberate misrepresentation. The difference being Mick Lynch was defending others in a hostile interview, while 30p was blame-shifting from something he had actually done.
The core vote won't spot that difference, and he may look like a hero to them. However, with this large a polling deficit, these are not the people the Tories need to convince.

[Abernathy]

Right then :

Is the appointment of 30p Lee as deputy chair :

a) a cunning ‘dead cat’ distraction

b) what posh Tories think working class voters are like.

c) because no one else wanted the job.

[Andy McDandy]

As ABC as Martin Fry giving a pep talk to a bunch of estate agents.

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Popbitch:

>> Tactful Lee <<
Here comes trouble...

The Tories' new deputy chairman Lee Anderson is off to a flying start in the new job - having already created two media storms in his first few days: one for recommending the reintroduction of the death penalty; one for making threats to a radio interviewer.

There's potentially a third one on the horizon too. Remember last month, when he posted a picture of his parliamentary assistant to Twitter – publicly discussing her personal finances to demonstrate how someone earning her salary didn't need to use foodbanks?

Word from Westminster is that he's letting her go...

[Youngian]

I think Ian Dunt has hit the nail squarely on the head - Anderson's appointment is pure Own The Libs nonsense, designed to enflame people such as those of us who post on this forum. To drink our Libtard tears, or whatever such crap they are convincing themselves of this week.

Sunak hasn’t given a bigger laugh in weeks. None of his cunning plans have an intended outcome.

[The Weeping Angel]

Sadly true

[davidjay]

I think Ian Dunt has hit the nail squarely on the head - Anderson's appointment is pure Own The Libs nonsense, designed to enflame people such as those of us who post on this forum. To drink our Libtard tears, or whatever such crap they are convincing themselves of this week.

Dunt is also correct about his appointment having more than a hint of desperation to it. It really does feel that the Tories, or at least a significant section of the party, are slowly giving up on the next GE. I have no idea who the Labour equivalent to Anderson is (Burgon?), but I cannot imagine any circumstance whatsoever whereby Starmer would appoint such a character to this sort of vital party role.

It's partly owning the libs, but there's also some classic Tory inclusivity there. They love to bring people who aren't like them into the fold so that they can boast about not being racist, or snobbish, or sexist - just as long as whoever they bring in knows their place and shuts the door behind them.