Lee Anderson: ‘Food bank users are often wasting money on fags, booze and Sky TV’

Anderson notes how the childhood friends he grew up with in “one of the roughest parts of Ashfield” have done well. “They’ve seen where they’ve come from and thought ‘F— that, I want a decent life’. They’ve got strong Conservative values – aspiration. And they want their children to do a little bit better than what they’ve done.” Rishi Sunak, the millionaire Prime Minister, and other privileged Conservatives, can “sympathise” but not “empathise” with the poor. “It’s not their fault how they were brought up,” he says.

 The Tory grassroots seem to have taken Anderson to their hearts. He is often booked to speak at southern Tory associations, desperate to hear from their new cousins in the party’s Red Wall. In the weeks leading up to Christmas he was asked to address local Conservatives in Chipping Barnet, Ipswich and leafy Kensington, among others, to hear him deliver “straight talking with a healthy slice of common sense”, according to one association. 

Anderson is convinced he can hold his seat at the next general election and even – despite the polls – is cautiously optimistic about the Tories’ chances to hold on to power – as long as Sunak adopts what he describes as “Conservative policies”. A lot of my voters – especially the first time Tory voters – voted for a Conservative government: can we please have some Conservative policies? 

“I know that we’ve been interrupted by Covid, the war in Ukraine and now the strikes, but Rishi has got nearly two years to turn it around. Hopefully in the run-up to the next general election, people in this country can start to see what a Conservative government is all about. And that means cutting taxes, cutting business rates, making sure that work pays, securing our borders, that there’s more police on the street, and sorting these strikes out.” 

One of his ideas is for the Government to do more to stop people “abusing the system”. He takes aim at “those people that quite frankly don’t want to go to work. People who are feigning illness. I used to see them on a daily basis in my time at Citizens Advice Bureau. 

“I’d see people coming in on two sticks, or could hardly walk, and then Friday I’d see them downtown on the dance floor at the disco. We know that happens. 

“It’s not fair on the decent hard-working taxpayer in this country who puts a shift in, works seven days a week, and never sees the kids because they are working all the hours God sends.” 

He adds: “We as a government, as a Conservative Party, need to come down heavily on the side of the hard-working British taxpayers, showing that we really care about them.” 

He wants to see more government ministers promoting “personal responsibility” among the population and stopping a tendency among people to look for help from the state. Anderson describes this “can do” spirit as “the mentality of the Red Wall”. He says: “The Government has got to start promoting personal responsibility as well as aspiration. 

“It is your family, you provide for them. Make sure that you live in a safe, decent country with good education, a good health-care system and a good police force.” 

Anderson worries that the voice of an older generation who had to make do with what they had got when funds ran low is being replaced by one which expects the state to step in. “It’s not the state or the Government’s job to pay people more money. It’s your own job to support your family,” he says. 

“The generation of people that support me on this sadly are getting older and dying. And the new generation has probably not got those sorts of ideas and I think that’s a dangerous thing.” 

Although he uses his Twitter feed to take his message of self-reliance to voters, he blames social media for leaving younger generations feeling entitled. Asked why he is urging people to live within their means, he says: “There is a big sense of entitlement in this country.

“People automatically think they should have things. You see five-year-old kids with tablets and iPhones. “Back in the day if I got a hole in my socks, my mum sewed them up for me. Nowadays, you just chuck them in the bin and you get three new pairs for two quid from Asda.” Anderson is bemused that people cannot find work: “In this country now, we’ve got over a vast number of vacancies. So there is no excuse at all for people being out of work.”

For his fans, Anderson is a rare blast of common sense in Westminster, which can often get overwhelmed by issues which mean little outside SW1. Take this week’s row over the Government’s plans to ban trans conversion therapy. “There is a tiny amount of the population who are genuinely affected by it. And we must respect that and we must support and help,” he says. “But the campaign side of it are normally middle-class white blokes, in skinny jeans with silly beards and who’ve probably got hemp slippers on. 

“These are ones that are campaigning and have been a right nuisance about it. These sorts of people look for a minority group and then keep telling them that they’re victims. They keep telling them the world’s against them and the world’s not against them.” 

He adds: “Over the years, I’ve knocked on thousands of doors, spoken to literally tens of thousands of people, and nobody’s ever brought this nonsense up.” 

As a miner, Anderson went on strike a couple of times when John Major’s Tory government was closing mines in the early 1990s but now considers it “a pointless gesture”. His advice for today’s public sector workers who are striking over pay is to “put the family first, not the union”. 

He says: “You can carry that through your life sometimes being bitter and having that ‘poor me syndrome’ and blaming everybody else. 

“Other people are getting on with their life, working, grafting, getting another qualification, doing overtime and providing for their families.” 

As his followers will know, Anderson appears to enjoy winding up his critics on social media. His regular altercations with Steve Bray, an anti-Brexit campaigner who spends his time heckling Tories in Westminster through an outsized megaphone, often spread virally. 

On Friday, Anderson took it to the next level by challenging Bray to a boxing match to settle their differences. He told me on Chopper’s Politics podcast: “He is a nuisance. And I’ve got a challenge for him: meet me in the boxing ring. Let’s do three rounds. And if I win, he never protests out there again. And if he wins, I’ll go and protest with him.”