Both Labour and group of Conservative MPs say Lee Anderson defection highlights Tory failings – UK politics live

New Conservatives say Anderson’s defection shows Tories can no longer pretend ‘plan is working’

The New Conservatives, a group of rightwing, socially conservative MPs pushing for lower immigration and tax cuts, has put out a statement saying Lee Anderson’s defection confirms that red wall Tory voters have been let down.

In posts on X, the group, which is co-chaired by Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, also says the party can no longer claim that “the plan is working” – despite this being the core message being used by No 10 and CCHQ in Tory campaigning at the moment.

We regret Lee’s decision. Supporting Reform makes a less conservative Britain more likely. A Labour government would raise taxes, increase immigration, undo Brexit and divide our society. (2/7)

But the responsibility for Lee’s defection sits with the Conservative Party. We have failed to hold together the coalition of voters who gave us an 80 seat majority in 2019. Those voters – in our traditional heartlands and in the Red Wall seats like Ashfield – backed us because we offered an optimistic, patriotic, no-nonsense Conservatism. They voted for lower immigration, for a better NHS, for a rebalanced economy, and for pride in our country. (3/7)

Our poll numbers show what the public think of our record since 2019. We cannot pretend any longer that ‘the plan is working’. We need to change course urgently. A change of course does not mean fracturing our Parliamentary Party. (4/7)

We were all elected on the promises of 2019. We can hold together AND win back our disenchanted voters – but only if we recommit to serve the whole country, including the millions who feel alienated by mainstream politics and who put their trust in us because we promised change. (5/7)

That means commitments on crime, immigration, tax, skills, welfare, housing, defence and the NHS that go far beyond what we are currently offering. The New Conservatives have developed proposals in some of these areas and we are working on others for publication shortly. (6/7)

We urge our colleagues to work with us to develop a bold new offer, consistent with the spirit of 2019, that will convince our lost voters that we present a genuine alternative to Labour and the best hope for Britain. (7/7)

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Updated at 09.24 EDT

Key events

Keir Starmer has said that Lee Anderson’s defection to Reform UK shows that the Conservative party has given up on governing. He told Sky News:

This is not just about Lee Anderson. It’s about 14 years of failure.

Another day, another story about Tory division. And, you know, I think the bigger picture here is now you’ve got a government that is so distracted, it’s divided, it’s arguing amongst itself.

Meanwhile, there’s no proper governing going on. There are people really struggling, there are schools that need attention. And all we’re getting is more and more division within the Tory party.

Keir Starmer and shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson during a visit to a school in Harlow in Essex earlier today. Photograph: Ian West/PAShare

John Healey, Labour’s defence spokesperson, used an urgent question in the Commons this afternoon to press the Conservatives over defence spending – although the shadow minister was careful not to make any financial commitments of his own.

Conservative papers, led by the Telegraph and the Mail, have been running a campaign to increase defence spending from the existing 2.1% of GDP to 2.5% or even 3%. But no new extra money for defence was promised in last week’s budget.

Healey said:

[There was] nothing new for Ukraine. Nothing for Gaza or the UK operations in the Middle East and worse, both the Treasury and the House of Commons library confirmed the defence budget will be cut £2.5bn in cash terms in this next financial year.

James Cartlidge, the defence procurement minister, replying on behalf of the government, sought to hit back. Replying to Healey, the minister said: “He hasn’t even committed to matching our current spending on defence let alone 2.5%” – a target GDP level for the Conservatives, whenever the financial situation allows.

The budget red book showed that total defence spending, revenue and capital, would total £54.2bn this year and drop to £51.7bn in 2024/5, reflecting Healey’s calculations, although Cartlidge said the MoD would in fact spend more than that next year, at £55.6bn.

Lifting defence spending by half a percentage point of GDP would imply an increase of around £13bn in real terms, and the money would almost certainly have to come from other public spending, making for difficult choices in the next parliament if either party choses to go to the 2.5% level.

ShareGillian Keegan insists government on course to deliver extra free childcare places on offer from April

Gillian Keegan, the education secretary, has claimed all parents will be able to access childcare under the government’s expanded offer, amid warnings many will miss out, PA Media reports. PA says:

Keegan told MPs that government projections show more than 150,000 new funded places will be secured by early April.

She replied “absolutely” when challenged by Labour to commit to guaranteeing that all parents in England will be able to access places.

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt last year announced that eligible families of children as young as nine months will be able to claim 30 hours of free childcare a week by 2025.

As part of a staggered rollout of the policy, working parents of two-year-olds will be able to access 15 hours of free childcare from April. This will be extended to working parents of all children older than nine months from September.

Concerns have been repeatedly raised that many childcare providers in England will struggle to meet increased demand for funded places under the Government’s offer.

Speaking at education questions, Keegan told the Commons: “We’re delivering the largest ever expansion of childcare in England’s history, which begins rolling out in just three weeks’ time from April 1.

“We’ve done this before, when we more than doubled the entitlements of the last Labour government, and I’m delighted to update the House that our latest projections show more than 150,000 new funded places will be secured by early April.

For Labour, shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson said: “Neither the secretary of state nor any Treasury minister met with representatives of the early years sector in the months before last year’s budget announcement on childcare.

“Now with just three weeks to go parents, providers and even their own civil servants are sounding the alarm. Over seven in 10 providers say they’re not going to offer additional places, a quarter say they’re likely to close within a year. So will the secretary of state now guarantee that all parents will be able to access the childcare places that she promised?”

Keegan replied: “Absolutely, and I set out in my topical statement, and we’re working with every local authority to ensure the places are available.”

ShareBoris Johnson was ‘scatty, incoherent and rambling’ in key Covid meetings, inquiry told

Vaughan Gething, the Welsh health minister during the pandemic, considered Boris Johnson’s handling of key Covid meetings as “scatty, incoherent and rambling”, the inquiry has heard.

Gething made the comment in his written statement to the inquiry, and during the session today (see 4.26pm) Tom Poole, lead counsel for the inquiry, read out an extract. He told Gething:

When Matt Hancock chaired meetings of Cobra there was administrative efficiency and it was a matter of regret that the same could not be said for the meetings chaired by Mr Johnson, who you describe as ‘scatty, incoherent and rambling’.

Gething told the hearing that “the identity [of the chair] really does matter”.

Vaughan Gething giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry sitting in Cardiff today. Photograph: UK Covid-19 Inquiry/PAShareCovid bereaved accuse former Welsh health minister of incompetence

Bereaved families who lost loved ones to Covid have accused the former Welsh health minister, Vaughan Gething, of incompetence and arrogance after he revealed that all his WhatsApp messages from the time had been lost, Steven Morris reports.

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The Conservative MP Jackie Doyle-Price has described Lee Anderson as a “big girl’s blouse” because he did not have the courage to call Rishi Sunak to say he was defecting.

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Updated at 12.21 EDT

How Anderson’s defection means record 13 parties now represented in House of Commons

A reader asks:

Now that both Reform UK and Worker’s Party have MPs, is 13 the most parties represented in Parliament at one time?

Yes, if we are talking about “proper” parties. Here is the updated “state of the parties” page from the Commons’s website.

State of parties in Commons Photograph: HoC

David Boothroyd, who wrote what may be the best guide to British political parties, says the previous peak was at the end of the 2010-15 parliament, when there were 12 parties in the Commons. George Galloway was also in the Commons then, representing the Respect party, not the Workers party, and Ukip, a predecessor party to Reform UK, was also represented. The new voice this time is Alba, the small Scottish nationalist party set up by Alex Salmond after he left the SNP.

A reader points out that in the 1945 general election people were elected to the Commons under 15 separate headings, but several of these were independents loosely aligned to one of the bigger parties.

Going back further in time, you could probably find a period when there might have been more than 13 factions sitting in the Commons, if you were to categorise them in sufficient detail. But that would have been before the emergence of political parties in the nineteenth century.

Britain is often described as having a two-party system. But Nicolai von Ondarza, a researcher at SWP, a German foreign policy thinktank, points out that Britain now has almost as many parties in its first-past-the-post parliament as the Netherlands has in its PR one.

ShareBrown backs thinktanks’s call for cabinet secretary to give up running civil service, but Major disagrees

Although Sir John Major and Gordon Brown agreed at the IfG event in expressing doubts about its plan for an executive, inner cabinet to run the government (see 3.13pm), they disagreed on another of the thinktank’s recommendations.

The IfG report says the role of cabinet secretary and head of the civil service should be separate, and filled by two different people. This has happened in the past, but it is more common for the two jobs to be combined, as they are now under Simon Case.

Major said he thought combining the jobs made sense. He said:

I’m dubious about splitting the roles of cabinet secretary and head of the civil service … The civil service is the delivery of government, the engine of the whole machine. Its work is absolutely crucial. If a civil service fails, government fails.

For those reasons and others, I have no time to include, I believe its head should be the most senior civil servant, the only one with daily and direct access to the prime minister and that is the cabinet secretary.

But Brown disagreed. He said:

While it’s a very tricky distinction between policy initiation and policy implementation, I think it is too much to expect that the person who is the secretary of the cabinet is also going to be head of the civil service effectively. I remember Jeremy Heywood [a former cabinet secretary] saying that this was his fifth priority, to head the civil service, because there were four priorities before that.

So I can see the logic of a Civil Service Act which has as its basis a requirements on the head of the civil service to be responsible for the management of the civil service and to be accountable, yearly reporting to parliament for that accountability.

And I believe that that is a distinction between the cabinet secretary responsible for the political process of developing and then getting agreement on policy, and the administration of it with nearly 500,000 civil servants, is something that can be dealt with in a far better way than we’re doing at the moment.

ShareGordon Brown and John Major express doubts about thinktank’s plan for inner cabinet to run government

As Larry Elliott reports, Gordon Brown used his speech at the Institute for Government event (see 2.34pm) to say Britain should be put on an economic “war footing” to promote growth. He called for the creation of a National Economic Council, jointly chaired by the prime minister and chancellor with a mission to deliver annual growth of 3%. (Brown himself did something very similar when he was PM in 2008.) Larry’s story is here.

Brown told the IfG:

We are in a make-or-break decade for our economy.

Our growth levels are half what they were in the last two or three decades. Our productivity levels are now lower. The growth rate is now lower than it was at any time. Academics tell me since the industrial revolution, investment in this country is far lower as a percentage of national income from almost all our major competitors.

The regional economic inequalities in our country are now so serious that they demand urgent action. And of course as a result of that, standards of living for people in this country are continuing to fall.

There has got to be a turnaround strategy. We cannot govern in the way we have been doing if we are going to make this a decade when we can see an economic recovery …

We need to think with almost military precision about how we can put our economy on a war footing so that we are in a position to solve the problems I’ve just identified.

In his speech Brown also referred to a report in today’s Times saying that Keir Starmer wants to adopt the IfG’s proposal for the creation an executive cabinet committee. The IfG said this was needed because the full cabinet is too big to function as a decision making body. In his story Oliver Wright said:

Starmer is looking at creating a powerful new executive cabinet that would make key decisions in advance of them being presented to the cabinet, which is seen as too unwieldy to have proper policy debates.

The so-called gang of four would include Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, Angela Rayner and Pat McFadden, who is set to become one of the most important figures in a future Labour government as the prime minister’s “enforcer”.

In his speech Brown said that he thought that this proposal would be “very difficult” and might not work. He also joked that previous attempts at a “quadrumvirate” had not worked very well.

King Herod was part of a quadrumvirate where the four of them governed the Romand empire, and you can take it right through to recent times and the Gang of Four, which if I remember right has not survived to tell much of the tale that now.

He said the inner cabinet proposal “may need some further work”, and he said cabinet ministers outside the inner circle would not welcome the plan.

In his speech Major also expressed doubts about this idea. (See 2.34pm.)

John Major (left) and Gordon Brown at the IfG today. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PAShare

Updated at 11.22 EDT

The FT’s chief political commentator, Robert Shrimsley, thinks Lee Anderson ought to resign and trigger a byelection because he would probably win.

Think Lee Anderson is making a mistake not forcing a by-election. He’d probably win and give a big boost to Reform. In fact he prob has more chance of holding seat at general if he does.

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Updated at 11.44 EDT

John Major concedes Tories’ conduct in office has not been ‘conducive to high morale or good government’

The Institute for Government thinktank has published a report today setting out plans to reform how the centre of government works. It says the current No 10/Cabinet Office machinery is “not equipped to meet the challenges of the rest of the 21st century” and it proposes:

No 10 and the Cabinet Office should not continue in their current form, and should instead be restructured into a new Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and a separate Department for the Civil Service, housed in a modernised Downing Street and 70 Whitehall complex. It also calls for the appointment of a new first secretary of state to drive the government’s priorities, the creation of an executive cabinet committee made of a small number of key ministers, for splitting up of the cabinet secretary’s role and responsibilities, and reiterates the IfG’s call for a new civil service statute.

The former prime ministers Sir John Major and Gordon Brown both spoke at the launch, and they both endorsed much of what was in it.

In his speech Major conceded that his own party did not have a good record at governance. He said:

Let me be clear about this: Three prime ministers in one parliament, with a few malcontents seeking a fourth, does not help the perception of the centre of government.

Nor does a supreme court ruling that the government has broken the law.

Nor is it a good optic when ministers indulge in public arguments, openly blame or, in one or two occasions, insult their civil servants. Or when they favour the advice of often inexperienced political advisers over that of civil servants with years of specialist experience and knowledge. Or when they sack senior civil servants who offer candid advice, which simply did not suit the government’s thinking.

None of that conduct is conducive to high morale or good government. Politics needs changes to create and project a far more effective and trusted system.

Major also said that, although he agreed the cabinet has become “too large and cumbersome”, he thought there were “practical drawbacks to a formal inner cabinet” proposed by the IfG saying it would alienate those who are excluded. He went on:

The commission’s objective of a smaller decision-making body to advise cabinet could be achieved by appointing an informal cabinet sub-committee of appropriate ministers, or ad hoc meetings chaired by the prime minister.

John Major speaking at the IfG today. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PAShare

A reader asks:

What is the latest date that parliament can be dissolved prior to a GE on May 2nd?

For an election on Thursday 2 May, parliament would have to dissolve on Tuesday 26 March – two weeks tomorrow. In practice, the election would have to be called a few days beforehand, because normally a few days are allowed for remaining non-controversial bits of legislation to clear parliament.

All the possible dissolution and election dates this year are in this Commons library briefing paper.

After the budget the consensus view at Westminster was that a May election, which was already highly unlikely, had become even more unlikely. But Cat Neilan from Tortoise has spoken to someone who thinks the Lee Anderson defection tips the balance back towards May a tiny bit.

Could Lee Anderson’s defection tip the balance on a May election?

One Tory MP says it “ramps up” the possibility, adding: “I don’t think anyone really thinks things will improve under current regime.”

Another says No 10 has been “not so much sounding out as muttering darkly”

But, ever the broad church, another Tory MP says: “I think it just pushed election back until Jan 25.” And another Tory source says it would be “suicide” to go early….

On Thursday last week, after giving an ambiguous answer earlier in the day, Rishi Sunak said this about election timing in an interview.

I was very clear about this at the beginning of the year about my working assumption for the election being in the second half of the year – nothing has changed since then.

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Conservative MPs are on alert for a possible defection from their ranks, with northern backbenchers from ‘red wall’ seats regarded as the most likely.

One senior MP told the Guardian:

I don’t think this is a moment we will forget about in a hurry.

I think Lee Anderson was probably the most recognisable of the red wall intake of MPs at the last general election. He therefore carries a certain amount of weight, political weight, and I think it is pretty serious.

Another said they had “one or two” of their colleagues who could well decide to abandon the Tories for Reform UK.

I think that the red wall is pretty demoralised at the moment, not least because of what Lee has just done and I think that there will be some people from the same part of the country who might well decide to go.

Tory MPs said that Anderson’s departure did not come as surprise and many had been waiting for it since news emerged that he had held talks with Reform UK leader Richard Tice at a hotel.

ShareNew Conservatives say Anderson’s defection shows Tories can no longer pretend ‘plan is working’

The New Conservatives, a group of rightwing, socially conservative MPs pushing for lower immigration and tax cuts, has put out a statement saying Lee Anderson’s defection confirms that red wall Tory voters have been let down.

In posts on X, the group, which is co-chaired by Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, also says the party can no longer claim that “the plan is working” – despite this being the core message being used by No 10 and CCHQ in Tory campaigning at the moment.

We regret Lee’s decision. Supporting Reform makes a less conservative Britain more likely. A Labour government would raise taxes, increase immigration, undo Brexit and divide our society. (2/7)

But the responsibility for Lee’s defection sits with the Conservative Party. We have failed to hold together the coalition of voters who gave us an 80 seat majority in 2019. Those voters – in our traditional heartlands and in the Red Wall seats like Ashfield – backed us because we offered an optimistic, patriotic, no-nonsense Conservatism. They voted for lower immigration, for a better NHS, for a rebalanced economy, and for pride in our country. (3/7)

Our poll numbers show what the public think of our record since 2019. We cannot pretend any longer that ‘the plan is working’. We need to change course urgently. A change of course does not mean fracturing our Parliamentary Party. (4/7)

We were all elected on the promises of 2019. We can hold together AND win back our disenchanted voters – but only if we recommit to serve the whole country, including the millions who feel alienated by mainstream politics and who put their trust in us because we promised change. (5/7)

That means commitments on crime, immigration, tax, skills, welfare, housing, defence and the NHS that go far beyond what we are currently offering. The New Conservatives have developed proposals in some of these areas and we are working on others for publication shortly. (6/7)

We urge our colleagues to work with us to develop a bold new offer, consistent with the spirit of 2019, that will convince our lost voters that we present a genuine alternative to Labour and the best hope for Britain. (7/7)

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Updated at 09.24 EDT

Lee Anderson’s defection to Reform UK press conference – summary and analysis

The last time Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, held a press conference at Westminster, it was a bit of a flop because journalists were expecting Nigel Farage, the party’s honorary president, and he was a no-show. This time Tice did have a biggish personality with him, and a news story. According to the Guardian’s poll tracker, support for Reform UK have gone from 9% at the start of the year to 11%. Today’s announcement confirms the party has some momentum behind it, and it may provide a futher boost. But support at this level is way behind what Ukip was getting at the height of its popularity, and it almost certainly would not be enough for the party to win any seats at the next election.

Apart from the fact that Reform UK now has an MP, here are other things we learned.

I will be surprised if there are no more other MPs from other parties who don’t join Reform before the general election.

Tice accepted this forecast would not apply to an election in May, but very few people at Westminster now expect it that early. There are claims that up to nine Tory MPs are in talks to join the party. (See 10.24am.) Defections on this scale would be a huge blow to Rishi Sunak, but there is a long history of smaller parties making claims about potential defections that never actually happen.

When I find myself suspended for speaking my mind, and by the way speaking up on behalf of millions of people up and down the country who agree with me, that for me is unpalatable. It’s a shocker, if I’m honest.

I cannot be a part of an organisation which stifles free speech, and many of my colleagues in that place, in the Conservative party, do back back me on this privately.

Yet, after he lost the whip over his comments, Anderson put out a statement saying he accepted No 10 had no option but to do this. Anderson later said that his words had been “clumsy”, and he even wrote an article for the Daily Express accepting his use of the word “Islamist” had been problematic. Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the Commons, commended what he said in that article, telling MPs it represented Anderson’s more measured, “genuine view”. Today Anderson implied that it didn’t, and that he had no regrets about his original outburst.

It is no secret that I’ve been talking to my friends in Reform for a while. And Reform UK has offered me the chance to speak out in Parliament on behalf of millions of people up and down the country who feel that they’re not being listened to.

People will say that I’ve took a gamble. And I’m prepared to gamble on myself, as I know from my mailbag how many people in this country support Reform UK and what they have to say. And like millions of people up and down the country, all I want is my country back.

Tice confirmed that immigration, “gender ideology” and net zero would be key election themes for Reform UK. (See 10.39am.) On migration, he claimed that mass immigration was making the country poorer – even though mainstream economists generally say the opposite.

Tice claimed that the conduct of people on the pro-Palestinian marches was creating “genuine fear” amongst people in the Jewish community and he cited this as further evidence that Britiain was “broken”. He even claimed that many Jewish people were “thinking about leaving London to go back to Israel”. Mike Katz, chair of the Jewish Labour Movement, described his comments at antisemitic and wrong.

“Many [British Jews] are thinking about leaving London to go back to Israel?”

No @TiceRichard. Height of ignorance (& casually antisemitism); most British Jews were born here and like living here.

Stop using Jews as a political football. Get yourself educated and do one.

To be clear, in his scripted remarks Reform leader @TiceRichard, in his scripted remarks, said that Jews here are thinking of *going back* [my emphasis] to Israel.

Ignorant antisemitism, when he purports to support Jews who worry about growing antisemitism. We see you.

Anderson defended his decision not to resign and trigger a byelection – even though in the past he backed a bill that said a byelection should happen if an MP defected to another party, as he has done. This is from the Mirror’s Ashley Cowburn.

Asked why he was not willing to trigger a byelection, Anderson said that it would be reckless to hold a byelection when there could be a byelection in May. He also said a byelection would be expensive.

My parents have been saying to me for weeks now, you cannot win, we can’t vote for you being in the Conservative party.

If my parents are saying that, what chance have I got?

Richard Tice (left) and Lee Anderson at their press conference. Photograph: James Veysey/REX/ShutterstockShare

Updated at 09.29 EDT

Lee Anderson has represented the Nottinghamshire seat of Ashfield as a Conservative MP since 2019, having previously served as a Labour councillor on Ashfield district council.

Jason Zadrozny, the leader of the council who is vying for Anderson’s seat as an independent candidate at the next election (see 12pm), described his defection as the “worst kept secret in Ashfield”. Zadrozny said:

Ashfield people do not want the continuing soap opera of Lee Anderson. The fact that he is defecting to another ramshackle, right-wing political party is the worst kept secret in Ashfield.

People in Ashfield just want an MP to speak up for their concerns and deliver results for them. Living standards in Ashfield have plummeted since Anderson became the MP and these shenanigans do not help a single struggling family here. If Lee Anderson truly cared about local people, then today’s announcement would have been his resignation.

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Owen Winter from the Economist points out that, when Lee Anderson seeks reelection as a Reform UK candidate in Ashfield, he will be up against not just the main parties, but also Jason Zadrozny, a local independent who came second last time. At the recent Rochdale byelection another independent came second, behind George Galloway.

Ashfield is a very interesting constituency. Zadrozny is running again, having swept the council elections last year. Labour and Reform will both be targeting it. Wonder if Conservatives could slip to fourth

ShareLabour says Lee Anderson’s defection to Reform UK shows Tory party ‘too extreme to be led’

Labour says the defection of Lee Anderson shows that Rishi Sunak’s judgment is flawed and that the Conservative party is “too extreme to be led”. This is from Pat McFadden, Labour’s national campaign coordinator.

While the Conservatives are falling apart, Labour is focussed on turning the page on 14 year of Tory failure.

What does it say about Rishi Sunak’s judgement that he promoted Lee Anderson in the first place?

The truth is that the prime minister is too weak to lead a party too extreme to be led, and if the Tories got another five years it would all just get worse.

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Updated at 10.33 EDT

In his response to one of the questions at the press conference, Lee Anderson said that a lot of the current Tory MPs won’t be in the Commons in a year’s time. I misheard what he originally said, and have updated and corrected the post at 10.59am. You may need to refresh the page to get the update to appear.

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