Tice says he will be ‘surprised’ if Reform UK does not get more Tory MPs joining – UK politics live | Politics

Commenting on Lee Anderson’s defection, a Conservative party spokesperson said:

Lee himself said he fully accepted that the chief chip had no option but to suspend the whip in these circumstances. We regret he’s made this decision. Voting for Reform can’t deliver anything apart from a Keir Starmer-led Labour government that would take us back to square one – which means higher taxes, higher energy costs, no action on channel crossings, and uncontrolled immigration.

Tice claims he will “surprised” if Reform UK does not get more Tory MP joining before the general election (although he accepts that is unlikely if the election is called this month, for a poll in May).

Anderson is speaking now.

He claims he does not know some of the long words that other MPs know.

And this has led to his views being labelled controversial, he claims.

He goes on:

But my opinions are not controversial. There are opinions which is shared by millions of people up and down.

It is not controversial, to be concerned about illegal immigration.

And it is not controversial to be concerned about the Metropolitan police and the London mayor failing on hate marches, he says, or wanting to fight back against culture wars.

He says he wants to get his country back.

All I want is my country back. This may sound offensive to the liberal elite, but it’s not offensive to my friends, my family, my constituents and some of my donors.

And he says his parents, who are both nearly 80, said they would not vote for him unless he joined Reform UK. He says he must not let them down.

Tice claims people’s concerns and anxieties have turned to anger and fury.

Britain is broken, he claims. “And we all know who broke it.”

He claims the Tories have imposed on the country mass migration, which he claims is making the country poorer.

And he claims the pro-Palestinian marches are creating fear for the Jewish community. This is a terrible indictment of the police and the government, he says.

And people are “horrified” that gender ideology is infecting schools, he claims.

And people are concerned about the cost of net zero, he claims.

He claims that people who raise these issues are dismissed as bigots. Reform UK represents these people, he says.

He claims the Westminster establishment has never been more out of touch. And he says that is why Reform UK is going up in the polls. In one recent poll they were only five points behind the Tories, he claims.

He says at this election in red wall seats Reform UK want to replace the Tories as the main alternative to Labour.

And he says he has a red wall champion – Lee Anderson.

Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, is speaking at his press conference.

He says the chancellor said last week the plan was working.

But no one told him the country is in recession, and that the recession per person is the longest since records began 70 years ago, he says.

Christopher Hope, the political editor of GB News, covers Reform UK more thoroughly than almost anyone else in the lobby and he is reporting that Lee Anderson, the former Tory deputy chair, is defecting to Reform UK. He was elected as a Conservative, having previously been a Labour councillor, but was suspended from the parliamentary party after claiming Sadiq Khan was controlled by extremists.

Hope has posted these on X.

BREAKING @GBNEWS understands that former Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson MP is set to defect to the right wing Reform UK party today.
Lee Anderson and Reform UK not commenting.
More at @GBNEWS’ website now. Watch the press conference live on the channel from 10.30am.

BREAKING Sources close to the Reform UK Party tell me that as many as nine Conservative MPs are in advanced talks to join the Reform UK party.

Reform UK are holding a press conference at 10.30am.

During his media round this morning Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, defended his decision to write a joint article with the Foreign Office minister Anne-Marie Trevelyan last week saying defence spending needs to rise “at much greater pace than at present”.

The article was implicitly critical of the budget, and was seen as pushing at the boundaries of what is allowed under collective responsibility.

In his interview on BBC Breakfast, Tugendhat said that the government has already set out a commitment to raise defence spending to 2.5% of GDP and that Rishi Sunak was “absolutely right” on this.

Asked whether the article (a post on LinkedIn) had been approved by No 10, Tugendhat said it was not normal to clear social media posts through Downing Street.

And speaking on Sky News, Tugendhat said:

Look at the world that we’re seeing today. Look at the rise in autocracy. Look at the challenges that we’re facing.

This prime minister has set out that agenda and we need to deliver it. I want to achieve 2.5% now, you know, as soon as possible, that is exactly what we need to achieve. First step to do is to get to 2.5% and then we’ll have to adjust as the challenges we face evolve.

Good morning. This week the government is due to issue a new official definition of extremism, and it comes after Rishi Sunak has been talking up the threat, which he has partly linked to to the pro-Palestinian marches that have been taking place since the outreak of the Israel-Hamas war. Two weeks ago, in a briefing to police officers, Sunak said: “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule.” Then, in a surprise Friday night speech outside No 10, he said that extremist groups were “trying to tear us apart”. Later this week Michael Gove is expected to publish a new definition saying “core behaviours” that could constitute extremism include attempts to “overturn, exploit or undermine the UK’s system of liberal democracy to confer advantages or disadvantages on specific groups”.

While there is no doubt at at that events in the Middle East have triggered a huge increase in reported incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia, some of the government’s response has been criticised as alarmist, or even hypocritical. This is a message posted by Charlie Falconer, the former Labour lord chancellor, on X, last night.

Falconer was commenting on a Guardian story by Kiran Stacey saying that three Conservative home secretaries, Priti Patel, Sajid Javid and Amber Rudd, are among a group of experts in this field who have signed an open letter saying that the government should be building a political consensus on this issue and “it’s particularly important that that consensus is maintained and that no political party uses the issue to seek short term tactical advantage”. It does not directly accuses the government of politicising the issue, but the authors of the letter clearly fear this is a risk, and their intervention follows the row triggered by Lee Anderson, the former Tory deputy chair, claiming that Sadiq Khan, the Labour London mayor, was under the control of Islamists.

Javid and Rudd were both relatively liberal home secretaries (at least, in Tory terms), but Patel was, and is, a rightwing hardliner. Any Tory minister whose crackdown on extremism is deemed by her to be going a bit too far would be wise to consider that perhaps it is.

Here is Kiran’s story.

Tom Tugendhat, the security minister, was on the media round. Asked about the letter signed by Patel, Javid, Rudd and others, he said they were “absolutely right” to say that the government should not be using this issue for party political advantage. He went on:

I don’t think we should, and I don’t think we are.

When it was put to Tugendhat that Sunak’s claim that the UK was becoming subject to “mob rule” was not helpful, he declined to defend it. “We all speak in our own way about various different issues,” he said. But he defended what the PM said in his speech in Downing Street (which did not repeat the “mob rule” claim). Tudgendhat said:

I think the prime minister set out on the steps of Downing Street a very, very clear – and, I would argue, very inclusive – agenda on keeping British people safe. He made the point, and I think it’s the correct one to make, that extremism in this country sadly has resumed. We must take action to confront it.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Rishi Sunak is doing a visit.

Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting a school in Essex with Bridget Phillipson, the shadow education secretary.

10.30am: Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

12.30pm: Former prime ministers Sir John Major and Gordon Brown speak at the launch of the Institute for Government’s “Fixing the Centre of Government” report.

2.30pm: Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, takes questions in the Commons.

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