The newly appointed Conservative party deputy chairman has said he supports the return of the death penalty. The MP for Ashfield said it was because “nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed”.
Lee Anderson was handed the position of Conservative deputy chair during the prime minister’s reshuffle on Tuesday, in a move which raised eyebrows given his history of controversial comments.
In the past, he has questioned whether food bank users have genuine need and criticised England football players for “taking the knee” in protest at racism.
Mr Anderson’s most recent comments on the death penalty were delivered in an interview with The Spectator magazine a few days before his surprise appointment.
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Asked whether he would support the return of the death penalty, Mr Anderson told the weekly magazine: “Yes”. He added: “Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed. You know that, don’t you? 100% success rate.”
The death penalty for murder in the UK was outlawed permanently in 1969 and then totally abolished for all crimes in 1998. The UK has also signed up to the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits the restoration of the death penalty.
But Mr Anderson suggested that particularly heinous crimes, where the perpetrators are clearly identifiable, should be punished by execution.
Mr Anderson told the magazine: “Now I’d be very careful on that one [the return of the death penalty] because 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”.
Mr Anderson, who recently compared the government to “the band on the Titanic”, also said migrants arriving unlawfully in Britain should be returned the “same day” to where they came from.
The former miner said he visited Calais last month and met migrants referring to Britain as “El Dorado”.
“They are seeing a country where the streets are paved with gold — where, once you land, they are not in that manky little f****** scruffy tent,” he said.
Asked for his solution, he replied: “I’d send them straight back the same day.
“I’d put them on a Royal Navy frigate or whatever and sail it to Calais, have a stand-off. And they’d just stop coming”.
Anderson joined the Conservative Party in 2018, in protest against the Labour party’s approach to Brexit and the party’s move to the left under Jeremy Corbyn. He formerly served as a Labour councillor in Ashfield, and later as a Conservative councillor in Mansfield.
He has also worked for the Citizens Advice Bureau, and later served as office manager for the former Labour MP for Ashfield, Gloria De Piero. In 2019, Mr Anderson replaced Ms De Piero as the constituency’s MP.
In 2021, the new Conservative deputy chair announced that he would not be watching the England football team for the first time, as it took part in the European Football Championships. He was critical of the players “taking the knee” before kick off and likened this to the players supporting a political movement.
Despite his history of controversial statements, Mr Anderson told The Spectator he found voters often agreed with him.
“If I say something that is supposedly outrageous in that place [the Commons], I get back to Ashfield on a Thursday, people will come out the shops and say ‘You say what I’m thinking’”, he added.
“Maybe some of my colleagues think I’m a little bit too divisive. But I’m of the mind that half the population will hate you, whatever colour you wear”.
Mr Anderson is popular among grassroots party members and was voted favourite backbench MP of 2022 in a survey by ConservativeHome.
In the aftermath of his appointment as party chair, one Conservative MP told Sky News’ Sam Coates that Mr Anderson is “everything that is wrong with the Conservative brand presently”.
The MP added: “He seems to rejoice in deliberately provoking and making aggressive simplistic statements that fail to recognise the complexities of the issues facing the country.
“If this is the new Tory party, many will be forgiven for deserting it”.
But Mr Anderson’s appointment was also praised by some, including Conservative MP for Selby and Ainsty Nigel Adams who hailed the decision as a “clever appointment” by the prime minister. “He understands why people voted Conservative in 2019 and what makes them tick”, Mr Adams added.
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