Politics Unpacked: Lee Anderson defects finally, Welsh Labour leader and definition of extremism

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Ralph Blackburn presents everything you need to know in UK politics this week.

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:09 Hello, National World Politics Editor Rafe Blackburn here for another episode of Politics

00:15 Unpacked to start off your week in Westminster. So first up we have Lee Anderson, he's back,

00:21 well sort of. Anderson, he was first a Labour councillor, then a Tory MP and Deputy Chairman

00:27 of the Conservative Party, has now become Reform UK's first MP, the Richard Tice's

00:34 anti-immigration party. So a big moment for them and a big moment for Anderson. Like I

00:42 said, he was made Tory Deputy Chairman by Rishi Sunak, he was designed to be the Tories

00:48 kind of attack dog who, you know, said things that maybe were a bit too unpalatable for

00:54 Rishi Sunak to say on immigration and appeal to those, you know, swing voters who were

00:59 considering moving on to reform. However, eventually Anderson went too far and said

01:05 that London Mayor Sadiq Khan was under the control of Islamists. Anderson also said they

01:11 were Khan's mates. And this led to him losing the Tory whip and being suspended from the

01:17 party after he refused to apologise for his comments. Now, National World First broke

01:24 the story that Anderson had been in talks to join Reform even before he lost the whip.

01:30 And so since then, there's been much speculation about whether he was going to join Tice's

01:35 kind of anti-immigration, slightly insurrectionist party. And so yeah, now here we are today

01:42 at a press conference in London. Anderson announced he was joining Reform UK to become

01:48 their first MP. He said he was prepared to take a gamble on himself. And he criticised

01:56 the Conservatives for not being strong enough against immigration and for not allowing free

02:02 speech. He said he wanted to, you know, continue the culture wars. He said he shouldn't be

02:08 afraid to fight the culture wars. Now, Anderson has said he will not fight a by-election as

02:15 other candidates have or other MPs have done when switching parties. Most notably, when

02:21 two Conservative MPs, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless left UKIP in 2014, they then

02:27 resigned to fight a by-election. Anderson said he won't do this, despite, you know,

02:34 previously signing a motion to force MPs to fight by-elections. It's not the first time

02:40 he's maybe been slightly hypocritical. He also said MPs shouldn't have second jobs for

02:45 taking an £100,000 a year gig with GB News. So it's an interesting time for Reform and

02:52 an interesting time for Anderson. It'll be noticeable to see how much this affects Rishi

02:57 Sinhak and also whether Anderson can win back the seat at the next general election later

03:04 this year. If you want to find out more about Anderson and the view from Ashfield, his constituency

03:09 in Nottinghamshire, my colleague Andy Dunne-Johnson, who's the deputy editor of the Mansfield and

03:14 Ashfield chat, has written an excellent piece on Anderson, which is currently on the nationalworld.com

03:22 politics section of the website. So later this week, Michael Gove is set to announce

03:27 the government's new definition of extremism. The government says it wants to, you know,

03:34 set this up to give people a better idea of, you know, who is an extremist. However, critics

03:41 have said this could clamp down on free speech. Now, this seems to have stemmed from the free

03:47 trip to Palestine marches we have seen pop up on the streets of London and across the

03:53 country since the war in Gaza broke out last October. And now Michael Gove and Rishi Sinhak

04:00 have both said part of these protests have been infiltrated by extremists. And Gove,

04:07 who will be deciding on the government's definition of extremism, has said he hopes it gives people

04:13 a better idea about whether they should go on these protests and who is setting them

04:19 up. It comes as kind of a theme from Rishi Sinhak, you know, he gave a speech on the

04:26 steps of Downing Street a few weeks ago about extremism infiltrating the country. And he

04:33 also came up with the slightly odd statement that mob rule was overtaking democratic rule.

04:39 So to me, it seems like Sinhak has kind of tried to build this up as a culture war and

04:44 a dividing line between himself and Labour. Now, ahead of the definition, which is due

04:48 to be announced on Thursday, three former Home Secretaries, Priti Patel, Sajid Javid

04:53 and Amber Rudd have all written to the government and urged them not to politicise this and

04:57 seek as much of a consensus as possible around this. So we'll wait and see with bated breath

05:04 what Michael Gove come out with on Thursday and whether it will satisfy some criticism,

05:08 even from Sinhak's own backbenchers. On Saturday, we will find out who has become the next leader

05:16 of Welsh Labour and therefore also the First Minister of Wales, the leader of the devolved

05:22 Welsh government. Now, the choice is between two people, Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles.

05:29 Gething was the Health Minister during the Covid pandemic, which was one of the times

05:33 when the government in Wales really diverged from in England, particularly around Covid

05:39 rules and this kind of thing. However, Gething has been slightly controversial during the

05:46 leadership contest. He had disappearing WhatsApp messages on during the pandemic, which was

05:53 revealed to the Covid inquiry, something which Nicola Sturgeon has also come under fire from

05:59 because people say, you know, it's hard to be fully accountable and find out how these

06:02 important decisions were made when WhatsApp messages auto delete. He's also received a

06:08 £200,000 donation from a Welsh energy firm which wants to build a solar farm on protected

06:14 land near Cardiff. Now, the reason why this is important is because in order to build

06:19 that solar farm, they need government sign off. And the £200,000 was around eight times

06:25 as much as Mark Drakeford's entire leadership budget was when he became Welsh Labour leader.

06:32 Facing Gething is Jeremy Miles, who is the current education minister and Welsh language

06:39 minister. He was part of the Welsh government joining the legal bid to try and stop Boris

06:45 Johnson proroguing Parliament during the Brexit wars. And if elected, he would also become

06:50 Wales's first LGBT first minister. So who will replace Mark Drakeford? We'll find out

06:58 on Saturday. It's between Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles. Just a reminder, you can

07:03 find all of National World's politics stories on our website on nationalworld.com/news/politics.

07:09 And you can also sign up to my weekly newsletter which comes out on a Sunday, summing up the

07:14 week and a few things to account for in the next week, which is on the nationalworld.com

07:18 newsletter section. Thank you very much for watching this episode of Politics Unpacked.

07:24 My name is Rafe Blackburn and I'll see you again next week.

07:26 [MUSIC PLAYING]

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