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Thursday 9 February 2023

Lee Anderson - Nurse, The Screens

Appointing politicians to high office, because the act of their elevation will offend the party’s opponents, rather than the appointee having the ability to carry out the role, only ends one way. The role is not carried out in anything like an optimal manner, the party concerned suffers, and all the while, those opponents provide a chorus of derisive laughter as the barrel is scraped.

Lee Anderson

That thought was clearly not allowed to enter when Rishi Sunak, carrying out his mini-reshuffle earlier this week, somehow promoted Lee Anderson to the role of Tory deputy chairman. Yes, 30p Lee, ejected from the Labour Party, accepted by the Tories, caught passing off a pal as a swing voter, hosting an invitation only Facebook group that was a sewer of racist bigotry, caught on video assaulting a protester (several times), making dishonest claims about how much it costs to cook a meal, and so much more. That Lee Anderson.

Anderson’s elevation did have one supporter: the deeply unpleasant former Murdoch editor Kelvin McFilth, whose successes running the Sun included losing sales on Merseyside after Kel’s smear of Liverpool fans after the Hillsborough stadium disaster in 1989. Because Lee wants to string them up.

Yes, he’s in favour of the death penalty, because “nobody’s ever committed a crime after being executed”. No shit, Sherlock. But on all those occasions where the wrong man was convicted, the real culprit remained free to commit as many crimes as he chose. And there have been a lot of those occasions.

Still, Anderson is standing his ground on his food bank pronouncements, asserting that nurses are paid £30,000 or more and so don’t need to use them. He wants anyone taking issue with this stance to find a nurse in the Ashfield constituency and bring them to himself. Not surprisingly, there have thus far not been any nurses being delivered to his door.

Rishi Sunak has, as the BBC’s Alex Partridge has told, had to distance himself from Anderson’s hanging and flogging agenda, observingRishi Sunak tells broadcasters that Lee Anderson's view on the death penalty is ‘not my view’ or the view of the government but they want to ‘bear down on crime’”. Like multiple assaults on protesters, for instance? Maybe not.

And the appointment appears not to be universally popular in Anderson’s own party, as one anonymous Tory MP has toldLee Anderson is everything that is wrong with the Conservative brand presently. He seems to rejoice in deliberately provoking and making aggressive simplistic statements that fail to recognise the complexities of the issues facing the country”. There was more.

He said WHAT? Oh SHIT

If this is the new Tory party, many will be forgiven for deserting it”. Especially if Anderson continues to defame those he dislikes, like food poverty campaigner Jack Monroe, who instructed lawyers after recent accusations by The Great Man. And even moreso after his car crash interview yesterday with presenter Verity Cowley on BBC Radio Nottingham. It did not end well.

Ms Cowley brought up Anderson’s 2019 General Election dishonesty, when he was caught trying to pass off a pal as a Labour-to-Tory swing voter, and the very deliberate doorstepping of said pal as a wholly random act. At this point, 30p Lee lost it, demanding to know if Ms Cowley had ever told a lie, telling her it was a yes or no answer and becoming aggressive with it.

It got worse: The Great Man complained that he had agreed to the interview to talk about his elevation to Tory deputy chairman, and then, when he failed to secure a guarantee that the interview would be broadcast in full, demanded that it not be broadcast at all, and if it was, he would not give Ms Cowley another interview ever again. The Beeb has, this time, stood its ground.

So the interview is being played in its entirety, just to show the world what a wonderful person the MP for Ashfield has turned out to be. This has not put off those at the increasingly alt-right Spectator magazine from giving Anderson a suitably fawning interview. But others are not persuaded.

The Secret Barrister is one. “Anybody who supports the death penalty is by definition supporting a system which results in the state killing innocent people. Only somebody with no understanding of history or criminal justice could fail to understand this. And such a person has no place in politics”.

Like the reappearance of Liz Truss, Lee Anderson will do little more for the Tories than persuade more of those swing voters to move in the direction of away, whether in Ashfield, the North West, Greater London or elsewhere. Shooting from the hip can seem very appealing, until the shooter starts shooting his party in the foot. And they can now do nothing to stop him.

Rishi Sunak thought he was showing leadership by appointing Anderson. His problem is that 30p Lee is leading voters away from The Blue Team. Good.


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22 comments:

Anonymous said...

""...the new tory party..." my arse. Anderson is all too typical of blue and red tories. Nothing new there. Ask Mann, Austin and McTernan - the Quiff Quisling gang too.

Anderson's problem is that he's just too obvious. And that will never do in the world of "public relations" and "political brands", a place ruled by platitudinous hypocrisy.

Anonymous said...

“If this is the new Tory party, many will be forgiven for deserting it”. - it's the same old Tory party (as anyone familiar with, say, Norman Tebbit would remember). Anderson's job is to feed the Mail/Sun headlines and boil the piss of Tory supporters.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...

Anderson's 'problem' is that he's a moron.

He's such a moron that he doesn't actually realise that he's a moron. He just seems to think he's 'straight-talking', 'controversial', 'no-nonsense'.

As a not insignificant proportion of the English population are also morons, he will be an attractive figure to many.

Maybe 'public relations' Sunak is not as daft as he appears.
As someone said, some succeed and are promoted despite their stupidity. Anderson has been promoted *because* of his stupidity.

Anonymous said...

Those who support the death penalty do so from a view of ‘it will never happen to me’. No one believes they will ever be accused of a crime they didn’t commit.

A friend found out it only takes a second to go from normal life to being stood over a dead body. She was acquitted, but mistakes will happen.

Anonymous said...

To 18:05.

Well, Blair/Brown and their cabinets and acquiescent supporters have never been accused of mass murder. And they're as guilty as their US/European equivalents.

All of them literally got away with murder.

Mr Larrington said...

Idiots like Leeanderthal and the equally appalling Jonathan Gullis are why we need a General Election sooner rather than later.

Anonymous said...

How many people has this government successfully euthanised in the past 14 years due to their inhumain social policies ?

gillette said...

3 pee Lee. A fine example of the Peter principle. Promoted way, way, above his level of (in)competence

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...

Here you are, Ayn Rant, Dominic Raab eyeballing The Mighty Quiff, Keir Royale*, in the playground.
Let's guess whose side you're on:

twitter.com/mattgrantsky/status/1623328741878292481


* It's a soft southern** drink, lad.
** Southern Burgundy

Anonymous said...

@14:02.

U OK Silly Billy Bertie hun?

You seem even more red tory overwrought than usual....

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...


I'm as perfectly wrought as a piece of the finest hammered Sheffield steel, me old Tankie.

And it's spiffing to have you back. Zelo Street was not the same in the absence of your Wildean wit and the characteristic succinctness, subtlety and nuance of your infrequent posts.
My Old Dutch and I are having a traditional (non-binary) knees-up tonight to celebrate your return.
Gertcha!

Maxwell Turnbull said...

It appears the that the member for Ashfield has upset a few people with his " telling it like wot it is ". You need to realise dear old wotsisface is a product of the environment that he has probably inhabited all of his life. Now, if that environment consisted of collieries and associated industries as is the case for him, you woul soon be drawn, almost irrisistably to the conclusion as to why he is such a gobby dickhead. If you find that you are need of evidence of this just travel to Kirkby in Ashfield or Mansfield. ( There are trains every half-hour from Nottingham. )

Anonymous said...

@20:52.

Nay, Silly Billy Bertie lad. Tha’ knows invertebrates aren’t “hard” and duhn’t ‘ave a spine.

Meanwhile, back on the blog topic of Anderson, here’s a public record of the kind of righty mentality that helped create his type of creep:

https://off-guardian.org/wp-content/medialibrary/200329-Labour-Report-Final.pdf?x29353
https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/The-Forde-Report.pdf

And this is the result of spineless Quisling betrayal:

https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/research/research-projects/representations-of-jeremy-corbyn

And this is what it sabotaged, what we could have had:
https://labour.org.uk/manifesto-2019/

I’m all in favour of on-topic facts, tha’ knows.

Next!๐Ÿ˜‚

Anonymous said...

@20:52 again.

Treble jellied eels and tutus all round!:
https://twitter.com/H_2023333/status/1624396985296990208

But not for these lads:
https://youtu.be/ajPI6knwz2s
๐Ÿ˜‚

Anonymous said...

Your ego knows no bounds doesn't it Anonymous. No one has your insight , knowledge of atrocities or human frail etc etc etc
Peddle stab in the back stuff along with tired sloganising and then sit back smugly content that you've had the last word. For the record (before you leap to your usual conclusion), I voted for Corbyn leadership, am not a Starmer apologist. It's just that your screeds are repetitive, lame and bloody boring.
No one can aspire to your lofty principles, primarily because the majority wouldn't want to ! Goodbye and Good Luck.

Mark Hayhurst said...

I've always liked Bertie, even if his references are, at times, a bit first year English module.

A top tier first year English student, but a bit on the nose nevertheless.

But it gets to the point that I think he's making, Starmer is just left enough to make do in the current climate of Lee Anderson.

Anonymous said...

@14:17.

Yeah, yeah....now, about the repetitive issues raised in Tim's blog, where only the names are changed to indict the guilty....

Hello?.....Hello?.....

See, truthful principles DO tend to be repetitive, even when there's an attempt to ignore them.

For example, ignoring them is what far right corporate media are paid for (also repeatedly reported in Tim's blog); that, plus said media promotion of the exact opposite.
https://www.lse.ac.uk/media-and-communications/research/research-projects/representations-of-jeremy-corbyn

Have a nice leaving day.

Anonymous said...

I rest my case. Forgot that you're the sole purveyor/arbiter of truth.
Can you spell egotistical or schmuck.?

Anonymous said...

@14:49.

You don't have a case. Red tory Quislings never have, goes with all the lies and hypocrisy.

Burlington Bertie from Bow said...



Leave him, Anonymous @14.49. He's never quite recovered from Khrushchev's speech to the 20th Congress of the CPSU. 67 Years of Hurt!

But congratulations, Mark Hayhurst, you patronising twerp.
You managed an entire post without once mentioning that you wrote plays.
See, it can be done!

Mark Hayhurst said...

That's a little harsh Bertie, I have always been kind to you.

Ben said...

It might be tempting and probably accurate to dismiss Anderson as an attention-seeker, a clown or a no-mark, but the problem is that we've been here before. We've been here before with Rees-Mogg, we've been here before with Johnson and we've been here before with Farage, and the worst thing that can be done with these characters is not to to take the threat seriously until it's too late. Five years ago Anderson wasn't even a member of his party. Now he's the deputy chairman, suggesting that the cut of his jib is liked by somebody whose opinion carries some clout, and if I've read this right then the media will do their damnedest to shove through some seriously unpleasant legislation by using him as the spearhead. Because this guy is representative of real genuine English working class opinion, whatever that might be a euphemism for. Have I got this right, or am I missing something here?