New Tory deputy chairman Lee Anderson backs death penalty

Lee Anderson, the new deputy Conservative chairman, has supported the death penalty, saying it had a “100 per cent success rate”.

In comments made before his appointment on Tuesday, the MP for Ashfield said the killers of soldier Lee Rigby should have been executed within a week of releasing their video confession.

Speaking to The Spectator, he said he would solve the small boats crisis by putting asylum seekers on a Royal Navy frigate and sending them back to France “the same day”.

Speaking to the Spectator, Mr Anderson said the Tories had been “too scared” to tackle benefit fraud because doing so looked like “picking on poor people”.

He criticised those who attacked him for his views, saying they were popular with the working class and that, as someone who had been “p--- poor”, he understood what it was like to be a single parent more than most MPs.

Mr Anderson was appointed as the Tory deputy chairman on Tuesday in a mini-reshuffle by Rishi Sunak. The appointment of the Brexit supporter, known as the “Red Wall Rottweiler”, was seen as a counterpoint to the new chairman Greg Hands, a Remainer.

Asked before his surprise appointment whether he would support the return of the death penalty, Mr Anderson replied: “Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed. You know that, don’t you? 100 per cent success rate.”

After a pause, he said: “Now, I’d be very careful on that one because you’ll get 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.”

In 2014, Rigby’s killers were sentenced to life imprisonment, with one being given a whole life order and the other ordered to serve at least 45 years.

Mr Anderson was also asked about his views on the small boats crisis and said that when he visited Calais last month he was told that migrants were 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 added. “They are going to be in a four-star hotel. And they know that Serco is buying up houses everywhere to put them in for the next five years. Why wouldn’t you come?

“For some reason, in this place, saying the obvious – they just call it populist. It’s our job to represent opinions of people in our country. If people are angry about small boats, then we should be angry.”

Asked how he would solve the crisis, he said: “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 standoff. And they’d just stop coming.”

Mr Anderson accused the Government of not being brave enough to tackle social security abuses, even though his constituents would support a crackdown. He said they had been “too scared, because it’s like picking on poor people, isn’t it? When, actually, most working class people would agree with me”.

In a Parliament increasingly dominated by middle-class professionals, Mr Anderson said he was able to speak plainly about food banks and other issues given his own life experience.

“I can say it because I was a single parent for 17 years with two boys,” he said. “I struggled. I know what it’s like to put your last fiver in the gas meter. I know what it’s like to have to sell your car because you can’t afford to run it – so I’ll take no lectures from anybody about being hard up and struggling for survival.

“It’s that when I speak, I’m speaking from a position of strength – when I talk about food banks or poverty, or whatever. I’ve been p--- poor. I’ve had two kids on my own. I’ve had no money. And when they talk about the NHS – it saved my wife’s life, it saved my life. I know what I’m talking about.

“Deprived areas? There is nowhere more deprived than the street I was brought up on. Don’t dictate to me that I’m some toffee-nosed Tory that’s been educated at Eton. All the social problems we’ve got – I’ve lived through them and helped people with them.”