The newly appointed deputy chairman of the Conservative Party has said he supports bringing back the death penalty. The MP for Ashfield said it was because “nobody ever commits a crime after execution”.
Lee Anderson was handed the post of Conservative deputy chair during a prime ministerial reshuffle on Tuesday, in a move that raised eyebrows because of his history of controversial comments.
In the past, he has questioned whether there is a real need for food bank users and has criticized England football players for “taking to their knees” to protest apartheid.
Mr. Anderson’s most recent comments on the death penalty were made in an interview audience Magazine 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: “No one has ever committed a crime after the death penalty. You know that, right? 100% success rate.”
The death penalty for murder in the UK was permanently banned in 1969 and then abolished completely for all crimes in 1998. The UK is also a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which prohibits the reinstatement of the death penalty.
But Mr Anderson suggested that particularly heinous crimes, where the perpetrators could be clearly identified, should be punished by the death penalty.
Mr Anderson told the magazine: “Now I would be very careful about it [the return of the death penalty] Because you tell certain groups ‘you can never prove it’.
“Well, you can prove it if they videoed it and were on camera – like the Lee Rigby killers. I mean: they should have gone, the same week. I don’t want to pay for these people”.
Mr Anderson, who recently compared the Government to the “bands of the Titanic”, also said that migrants who came to Britain illegally should be returned to where they came from “on the same day”.
The former miner said he visited Calais last month and met migrants referring to Britain as “El Dorado”.
“They’re seeing a country where the roads are paved with gold — where, once you land, they’re not in those little tiny ******** tents,” he said.
Asked for his solution, he replied: “I’ll send them straight back the same day.
“I’ll put them on a Royal Navy frigate or whatever and sail to Calais, have a stand-off. And they’ll just stop coming”.
Anderson joined the Conservative Party in 2018, protesting Labour’s approach to Brexit and the party’s move to the left under Jeremy Corbyn. He previously served as a Labor councilor in Ashfield and later as a Conservative councilor in Mansfield.
He also worked at the Citizens Advice Bureau and later worked as office manager for Gloria Di Piero, former Labor MP for Ashfield. In 2019, Mr Anderson replaced Ms Di Piero as Centre’s MP.
In 2021, the new Conservative deputy chair announced that he would not watch the England football team for the first time, as it participated in the European Football Championship. He criticized players “taking a knee” before kick-off and compared it to players supporting political movements.
Despite his history of controversial statements, Mr. Anderson said audience He found voters often agreed with him.
“If I say something that is supposedly offensive in that place [the Commons]I come back to Ashfield on a Thursday, people will come out of the shop and say ‘You tell me what I’m thinking'”, he added.
“Maybe some of my colleagues think I’m a bit too divisive. But I think half the population will hate you, no matter what color you wear”.
Mr Anderson is popular among grassroots members and was voted favorite backbench MP for 2022 in a survey by ConservativeHome.
After his appointment as chairman of the party, a Conservative MP Sky News‘ Sam Coates said Mr Anderson was “everything wrong with the conservative brand at the moment”.
The MP added: “He seems to delight in deliberately provocative and offensive simplistic statements that fail to recognize the complexities of the issues facing the country.
“If this was the new Tory party, many would be forgiven for abandoning it”.
But Mr Anderson’s appointment was praised by Conservative MPs including Nigel Adams of Selby and Anstey 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”, added Mr Adams.