Lee Anderson is the Reform UK MP for Ashfield, having first been elected to parliament at the 2019 general election. Anderson stood as a Conservative candidate in 2019, gaining the seat from Labour.

In the 2024 general election, Anderson (standing for Reform UK) received 17,062 votes, representing 42.8% of the vote share. The Labour candidate came second with 11,554 votes (29.0%), while the Ashfield Independents candidate secured 6,276 votes (15.7%). The Conservative candidate finished fourth with 3,271 votes (8.2%). Anderson was duly elected with a majority of 5,508 votes.

In February 2024, while serving as a Conservative MP, Anderson was suspended from the parliamentary party following comments he made about the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. In March 2024, he announced he was joining Reform UK, becoming the party’s first MP.

Anderson has hosted a show on GB News since 2023, called “Lee Anderson’s Real World”. It broadcasts every Friday evening.

Anderson previously served as a Labour councillor in the Ashfield District (2015-2018). He was suspended from the party in February 2018, prompting his defection to the Conservatives a month later.

Anderson’s Ashfield constituency is located in western Nottinghamshire, encompassing towns such as Sutton-in-Ashfield, Kirkby-in-Ashfield, and Eastwood. Historically a Labour stronghold held continuously from the mid-1950s until 2019, it includes former coal mining communities. The area voted strongly in favour of leaving the European Union (approximately 70%) in the 2016 referendum.

Ashfield was previously represented by former defence secretary Geoff Hoon from 1992 to 2010.

Political Career

Anderson currently represents Reform UK in parliament. He was appointed as the party’s chief whip in July 2024.

In May 2026, Anderson succeeded David Bull as chairman of Reform UK.

In a statement at the time, Anderson said: “I will do everything I can to make sure we carry our stunning performance in the recent May elections into the next general election, where we can smash Labour’s red wall to smithereens.

“I want to thank the people of Ashfield, the Capital of Common Sense, who’ve made this possible.”

Anderson’s switch to Reform UK in March 2024 followed the withdrawal of the Conservative whip after he claimed, in an interview on GB News, that “Islamists” had “got control” of Sadiq Khan and London. He subsequently refused to apologise for the remarks.

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Speaking to GB News on 24 February 2024, Anderson stated: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London, and they’ve got control of Starmer as well.”

He added: “People are just turning up in their thousands, and doing anything they want, and they are laughing at our police. This stems with Khan, he’s actually given our capital city away to his mates.”

Reacting to the comments, Khan said: “These comments from a senior Conservative are Islamophobic, are anti-Muslim and are racist.”

The GB News discussion came in response to a Daily Telegraph article written by former home secretary Suella Braverman. In it, she argued: “The truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the antisemites are in charge now.”

At the time, a spokesperson for the 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 MP.”

Anderson’s suspension left him sitting as an independent MP.

In a statement, issued on 27 February, Anderson refused to apologise for his remarks but admitted they had been “clumsy”.

The MP stated: “When you think you are right you should never apologise because to do so would be a sign of weakness. My words may have been clumsy but my words were borne out of sheer frustration at what is happening to our beautiful capital city.”

Two weeks later, Reform UK’s then-leader Richard Tice unveiled Anderson as his party’s first MP. Speaking at a press conference, Anderson said he was “prepared to gamble on myself” because he knew “how many people support Reform and what they have to say”.

Anderson added: “My opinions are not controversial. They are opinions which are shared by millions of people up and down the country. It’s not controversial to fight back in the culture war — a culture war that is sweeping our nation.

“But now like millions of people in this country, I feel that we are slowly giving our country away. We are giving away our way of life. We are allowing people to erase our history. We are giving up our streets to a minority of people who literally hate our way of life. We are letting people into our country that will never integrate or adopt our British values.”

With Reform UK polling at around 13%, Tice hailed Anderson as Reform’s “champion of the Red Wall”.

The Ashfield MP had previously mocked Tice as a “pound-shop Nigel Farage” and said Reform was “not a proper political party”.

Speaking to GB News mere months prior to his defection, and in his capacity as Tory deputy chair, Anderson said: “This [Reform UK] is not a proper political party, by the way, this is a company…

“I think [Richard Tice is] a pound shop Nigel Farage and every time he opens his mouth recently on whichever media platform, he is coming across as Reform’s answer to Diane Abbott. He’s just saying ridiculous things.”

Anderson’s defection underlined the general threat Reform UK posed to the Conservative Party as a rival ‘insurgent’ party on the right of British politics – one untainted by any record in government. At the 2024 general election, Anderson was returned as the Reform UK MP for Ashfield with a 5,509-vote majority.

He was the first of five Reform MPs – Nigel Farage, Richard Tice, Rupert Lowe and James McMurdock – to win a commons seat.

From February 2023 until January 2024, Anderson served as deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, appointed by then-prime minister and Conservative leader Rishi Sunak.

Anderson resigned as deputy chair of the Conservative Party to support amendments to the government’s Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill – emergency legislation to declare Rwanda as a safe country under UK law. This followed the November 2023 supreme court ruling which found the Rwanda deportations plan to be unlawful. The amendments, proposed by Conservative MPs Sir Bill Cash and Robert Jenrick, sought to strengthen the proposed legislation by limiting the ability of individual asylum seekers to prevent their deportation to Rwanda, under the terms of the government’s flagship removals scheme.

In the wake of the supreme court ruling, Anderson told GB News the government should “ignore the law” and “put the planes in the air now”.

The Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill received its commons third reading in the commons on 17 January 2024, by 320 votes to 276. A total of 11 Conservative MPs, including Braverman and Jenrick, voted against the legislation. Anderson ultimately abstained. The Tory MP said he had planned to vote against the bill but changed his mind after he saw Labour MPs “giggling and laughing and taking the mick”.

In an interview with GB News, Anderson said: “I got into the no lobby and I spent about two or three minutes with a colleague in there. The Labour lot were giggling… I couldn’t do it: In my heart of hearts, I couldn’t vote no.

“So I walked out and abstained.”

In November 2024, Anderson issued a formal apology in the House of Commons following an investigation by the Independent Expert Panel. The panel found that Anderson had engaged in behaviour that constituted “constituted bullying, and also harassment” against a member of parliamentary security in November 2023. Anderson initially denied the claims but accepted the findings in full after his appeal was rejected.

Anderson told the House: “I would like to apologies to the complainant and to this House for my behaviour. Our security staff do an incredible job and should always be treated with the utmost of respect.”

GB News announced that Anderson would host a show on the channel in March 2023 – for which he earns a salary of £100,000 a year. The announcement came after Anderson condemned MPs who need “an extra £100,000 a year” on top of their parliamentary salary, in the wake of the Owen Paterson lobbying row (November 2021).

He said in a Facebook post at the time: “If you need an extra £100,000 a year on top [of your parliamentary salary] then you should really be looking for another job.”

In June 2023, Anderson launched his show by spoon-feeding a fellow MP (Brendan Clarke-Smith) baked beans, naming a “wokey of the week” and featuring a “token lefty in the corner”. The then-Conservative Party deputy chairman ladled baked beans into his colleague’s mouth, saying: “Open your mouth, here comes the train.”

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Anderson is a vocal advocate for the return of the death penalty in the UK.

In an interview with the Spectator magazine, published in February 2023, Anderson said: “Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed.”

He added: “100% success rate.”

“You’ll get the certain groups saying: ‘You can never prove it.’

“Well, you can prove it if they have videoed it and are on camera – like the Lee Rigby killers. I mean: they should have gone, same week. I don’t want to pay for these people.”

In August 2023, commenting on asylum seekers housed on the Bibby Stockholm barge, Anderson was quoted by the Daily Express as saying, “If they don’t like barges then they should f*** off back to France”.

In May 2022, Anderson was criticised for suggesting in parliament that there was not a “massive” need for food banks in the UK, and their use was related to a lack of teaching on budgeting and cooking.

Anderson invited opposition MPs to visit a food bank in his constituency, where he said that meals could be cooked for about 30 pence per day, and which also provided a mandatory budgeting and cooking courses, to its users.

He said: “When people come now for a food parcel, they have to register for a budgeting course and a cooking course.

“And what we do at the food bank, we teach them how to cook cheap and nutritious meals on a budget. We can make a meal for about 30p a day, which is cooking from scratch.”

Questioned whether he even believed food banks were necessary, Anderson said that was “exactly my point”.

He said: “I think you’ll see first-hand that there’s not this massive use for food banks in this country. You’ve got generation after generation who cannot cook properly. They can’t cook a meal from scratch. They cannot budget.”

For these comments, he was given the nickname “30p Lee” by his critics.

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In 2021, while a Conservative MP, Anderson stated he would boycott watching the England men’s football team during the European Championships in protest against the players ‘taking the knee’ before matches, which he described as supporting a “political movement”.

He commented: “For the first time in my life I will not be watching my beloved England team whilst they are supporting a political movement whose core principles aim to undermine our very way of life.”

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Anderson served on the House of Commons home affairs committee from 2022 to 2024, the women and equalities committee from June 2021 to December 2021 and the committee on the future relationship with the European Union from 2020 to 2021.

Anderson is listed as a member of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for sepsis.

Anderson delivered his maiden speech on 27 January 2020 during a debate on the NHS Funding Bill.

In it, he said: “Ashfield was once voted the best place in the world to live – by me and my mates one Sunday afternoon in the local Wetherspoons. It really is the best place. Ashfield is a typical mining constituency.”

He added: “People of Ashfield are a straight-talking bunch – a bit dry, a wicked sense of humour, a bit sarcastic sometimes – but that is born out of our tough industrial past. You have to remember that we were the people who dug the coal to fuel the nation.”

Before entering parliament, Anderson served as a Labour councillor on Ashfield District council. He was elected to the council in 2015 but later suspended from Labour in 2018.

Anderson’s 2018 suspension came after he was issued with a community protection warning by Ashfield District Council after he hired a digger and placed concrete blocks to deter travellers from setting up camp at a site in the area.

Posting on Facebook, then-councillor Anderson said: “I received a call to advise me I had carried out a fly-tipping offence.

“I have been issued a community protection warning and if I do not remove them I will be fined.”

A spokesperson for the Ashfield Labour Group said: “We take all claims of racism extremely seriously. Whilst Councillor Anderson’s actions may be inappropriate, we do not believe this was racially motivated. The Labour Party is proud of its record of tolerance and diversity.”

Anderson defected to the Conservative Party in March 2018. In a statement at the time, he said: “The Labour Party has been taken over by the hard-left and Momentum in particular and I will play no part in that.

“It’s been a very difficult decision to come to.”

Anderson then served as a Tory councillor on Mansfield District council from 2019 to 2021.

Political Views

Anderson represents Reform UK in parliament and is positioned on the right wing of British politics – known for his socially conservative views and forthright style.

Leadership elections and loyalty

Tory leadership 2022 (I): Anderson supported Kemi Badenoch’s candidacy in the Conservative Party’s July-September 2022 leadership election. The contest was triggered by the resignation of Boris Johnson, following the mass exodus of more than 60 frontbenchers.

Badenoch, who had resigned as a local government minister, was seen as a combative culture warrior. Having gained significant momentum among the party’s right wing, she was eliminated in the fourth parliamentary ballot on 19 July after receiving 59 votes.

Anderson went on to support Liz Truss’ successful candidacy.

Tory leadership 2022 (II): Anderson supported Boris Johnson’s explored candidacy in the Conservative Party’s October 2022 leadership election. The contest was triggered by the resignation of Truss after just 45 days in office, following the financial and political tailspin triggered by her “mini-budget”.

Johnson, who had resigned as prime minister only months earlier, initially sought a return to office and claimed to have secured the 100 nominations required to proceed. However, he announced his withdrawal on 23 October, stating that “you can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament.” Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers, later confirmed that Johnson had indeed secured the 100 MPs necessary to force a ballot of the Conservative membership – which he could well have won.

After Johnson announced his withdrawal, Anderson went on to support Penny Mordaunt’s unsuccessful candidacy.

Johnson confidence vote: In June 2022, Anderson publicly declared their loyalty to the prime minister, Boris Johnson, ahead of a vote of no confidence in his leadership. The vote was triggered by discontent within the parliamentary party following the “partygate” scandal and the publication of the Sue Gray report. While the prime minister ultimately won the vote, the scale of the rebellion against him, with 148 of his own MPs voting to remove him, severely weakened his authority and presaged his resignation the following month.

Factional identity and party tradition

Blue Collar Conservatives: Anderson was previously listed as a member of the Blue Collar Conservatives group. This faction within the Conservative party was founded in 2012 by the former cabinet minister Esther McVey, but came to greater prominence following the 2019 general election. The group aimed to “champion working people and develop a conservative agenda to benefit the voters and communities most neglected by Labour”.

In October 2022, Anderson was succeeded McVey as the group’s in chair.

Common sense group: In the 2019-2024 parliament, Anderson was associated with the Common Sense Group (CSG) of socially conservative MPs. The CSG’s principal focus was to combat what it described as “woke” ideology. In 2021, it published a manifesto, Common Sense: Conservative Thinking for a Post-Liberal Age, which took aim at the Equality Act 2010, the supreme court, British broadcasters and environmentalist direct action group Extinction Rebellion. Veteran Conservative MP Sir John Hayes served as the group’s chair.

In a 2020 open letter published in the Daily Telegraph, MPs of the Common Sense Group said the faction had formed to “speak for the silent majority of voters tired of being patronised by elitist bourgeois liberals whenever issues such as immigration or law and order are raised.”

Northern Research Group: In the 2019-2024 parliament, Anderson was listed as a member of the Northern Research Group (NRG). The NRG was a faction within the Conservative Party composed of MPs representing constituencies across the north of England. It was founded by Jake Berry, who served as minister of state for the northern powerhouse and local growth from 2017 to 2020. The group’s stated aim was to pressure the Conservative government to deliver on its “levelling up” agenda.

Net Zero Scrutiny Group: In the 2019-2024 parliament, Anderson was associated with the Net Zero Scrutiny Group (NZSG), a faction within the Conservative Party that questioned the cost and feasibility of the UK’s climate targets. The group, which came to prominence in 2022, sought to link the then-Conservative government’s commitment to net zero with the cost-of-living crisis. In a 2022 open letter published in the Daily Telegraph, the group urged the government to scrap green levies and drill for more fossil fuels in the North Sea to lower energy bills. The COP26 climate conference in 2021 was said to have been a catalyst for the group’s formation.

Conservative Way Forward: Anderson has been associated with the Conservative Way Forward (CWF) grouping of Thatcherite MPs. CWF was founded in 1991 by supporters of Margaret Thatcher, aiming to “defend and build upon [her] achievements… and to adapt the principles of her era in government to modern concerns and challenges”. In July 2022, the group was relaunched by Tory MP Steve Baker.

Brexit and Europe

Anderson cited his reasons for leaving the Labour Party and joining the Conservatives in 2018 as disagreement with Labour’s stance on Brexit and the party’s direction under Jeremy Corbyn.

Customs union vote (2025): In December 2025, Anderson voted against the UK-EU Customs Union (Duty to Negotiate) Bill. The bill, introduced under the ten-minute rule procedure by Liberal Democrat Europe spokesperson Al Pinkerton, sought to mandate the government to enter into negotiations with the European Union to establish a bespoke customs union.

Electoral reform

Proportional representation bill: In December 2024, Anderson voted in favour of the Elections (Proportional Representation) Bill – introduced by Liberal Democrat frontbencher Sarah Olney under the 10-minute rule procedure. The bill sought to “introduce a system of proportional representation for parliamentary elections and for local government elections in England”.

A total of 138 MPs supported the bill – with 136 opposed. Notably, 59 Labour MPs backed Olney’s bill.

Introducing the bill, Olney told the House: “First past the post is a broken and unfair system. This summer, the Labour party won a landslide election victory, securing 63% of seats in the House of Commons in return for just 34% of the vote.

“The system leaves millions of voices unheard and creates a divisive, adversarial political climate where collaboration is discouraged and accountability is often sidestepped.”

Assisted dying

Anderson voted in favour of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, better known as the assisted dying bill, at second reading (November 2024). However, they went on to vote against at third reading (June 2025).

Setting out his position to the Daily Mail in January 2025, Anderson said: “I support assisted dying but this bill becomes less credible by the day. It looks like it’s being forced through at any cost therefore I fail to see how I can support this bill at third reading.”

Social values and conscience issues

Abortion decriminalisation (2025): Anderson voted against a backbench amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill that sought to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales in June 2025. The amendment, which was passed by a majority of 242 votes, removed women from the threat of prosecution for ending a pregnancy at any stage. As an issue of conscience, MPs were allowed to vote according to their personal beliefs.

Civil liberties

Covid passes vote (2021): Anderson was one of 99 Conservative MPs to vote against Covid passes in England in December 2021.

Before Politics

Born in 1967 in the Ashfield area, Lee Anderson attended Nottingham Trent University (formerly Trent Polytechnic, previously Nottingham technical college).

He worked as a coal miner for 10 years, following his father and grandfather into the industry.

After leaving mining, he worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau for 15 years. He later served as office manager for Gloria De Piero during her tenure as the Labour MP for Ashfield (2010-2019).

Personal Life

Lee Anderson is married and has two children. His wife, Sinead, is a Conservative councillor.. She has cystic fibrosis, previously receiving a double lung transplant for the condition.

At the age of 36, Anderson was treated for testicular cancer.

Trivia

Anderson worked for the previous Labour MP for Ashfield, Gloria De Piero, before later contesting and winning the seat himself, first for the Conservatives and subsequently for Reform UK.

His election win in 2024 secured Reform UK’s first parliamentary seat won at a general election.

Anderson comes from a coal mining family and was initially a member of Arthur Scargill’s National Union of Mineworkers. He campaigned for Michael Foot and Labour’s “longest suicide note in history” in 1983. Anderson cites Scargill, Dennis Skinner, and Tony Benn as significant early influences on his politics.

He told The Times in February 2023, upon his appointment as Tory deputy chairman: “When I was brought up, it was Dennis Skinner, Scargill and Tony Benn. That’s what we listened to in our house… that was sort of gospel.”

During the 2019 general election campaign, while standing as a Conservative candidate, Anderson was criticised for asking a friend to pose as a swing voter while being filmed by veteran political reporter Michael Crick.

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Crick later described Anderson as a “maverick candidate”, telling the BBC: “I couldn’t believe it when it occurred on the doorstep, that [the householder] was so extreme, and I said to Lee Anderson, ‘It’s almost as if all of this has been set up’.

“Mr Anderson said afterwards that he had been trying to make sure that somebody was in – he didn’t want us to go to a row of doors and find nobody in.”

Will Moy, then-CEO of Full Fact, commented: “What happens on the election trail matters. Candidates and parties are asking voters for their trust. They should be making clear and verifiable claims, behaving in an honest manner, and proving themselves trustworthy.

“Misleading campaign techniques from parties and candidates won’t only harm those who are caught out, but could damage voter confidence in our political system.”