Party bosses purportedly pushed Anderson to apologize in an effort to mitigate the fallout, but failed. He has since doubled down, claiming he has public support…reports Asian Lite News
Britain’s governing Conservative Party has once again found itself embroiled in accusations of Islamophobia following the remarks of its former Deputy Chair Lee Anderson.
Speaking on GB News last week, he claimed that London Mayor Sadiq Khan, one of the UK’s highest-profile Muslim politicians, had “given away control of the capital to his mates,” describing him as under the control of Islamists.
Party bosses purportedly pushed Anderson to apologize in an effort to mitigate the fallout, but failed. He has since doubled down, claiming he has public support.
A day after the comments were made, a party spokesperson confirmed that while remaining an MP, Anderson would no longer serve his Ashfield constituents as a Conservative but rather as an independent, in what is expected to be a highly contentious election year.
If the hopes were that a relatively swift, if not immediate, ousting from the party would calm the situation, such hopes have proved misplaced.
Many are pointing not to the event but its handling as indicative of structural Islamophobia within the Conservative Party, with commentators noting that the suspension came not for the comments themselves but for defying party requests that he apologize.
One of the Conservatives’ own leading figures, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi — the first Muslim to serve in the British Cabinet — told LBC Radio: “It’s definitely not a party I recognize, but it’s not a party that so many of my colleagues recognize. I’ve had colleagues on the phone … just despairing. I’ve had very senior ex-cabinet colleagues saying, ‘they’re just jokers.’ What disturbs me more is that this kind of divisive far-right conspiratorial rhetoric is now in the mainstream, and this has real-life consequences.”
Polling by Opinium of 521 Conservative Party members indicated that 58 percent consider Islam a threat to the British way of life, with 52 percent believing an ever more prominent conspiracy theory that pockets of Europe are under Shariah law and “no-go” areas for non-Muslims.
For some, the figures explain Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s repeated refusal to describe Anderson’s comments as Islamophobic, instead describing them as “unacceptable” and “wrong,” while denying claims that the party has Islamophobic tendencies.
Responding to Sunak, Khan told Sky News that he had been left “bewildered” by the party’s refusal to “call this (Islamophobia) out.”
“They should say what the problem is. The problem is that you have a senior Conservative saying things that are clearly racist, anti-Muslim and Islamophobic — this is leading to an environment where anti-Muslim crime is spiraling,” Khan said.
“What they’re doing is pouring petrol on the flames of Islamophobia. You wouldn’t put up with antisemitic tropes. Racism is racism.”
Scotland’s First Minister Humza Yousaf made the point more explicitly, telling STV News that the Conservative Party has a “structural” issue with Islamophobia, and that Anderson’s comments and the response are “just a further demonstration that Islamophobia is normalized.”
The evidence is not hard to find, with another furore having broken out last year when Khan’s Conservative opponent in the summer mayoral election, Susan Hall, whose candidacy has been mired in controversy, said Jewish Londoners were afraid of him and endorsed a tweet describing him as the “mayor of Londonistan.”
These are not the highest-profile Conservatives to have peddled Islamophobic rhetoric in recent years, nor is Anderson the first to have targeted Khan.
‘Pro-Palestinian marches to continue’
Pro-Palestinian marches in UK will continue to take place with thousands participating despite calls by British Home Secretary James Cleverly to end demonstrations, organizers have said.
The UK capital has been the scene of some of Europe’s largest pro-Palestine protests since October, with regular marches every fortnight in central London drawing hundreds of thousands.
Protest organizers said that the demonstrations would continue “at the very least until we see an immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, The Times reported.
Organizers vowed to continue taking to the streets even if a “humanitarian pause” was agreed on, arguing that this would only be a “stay of execution” for Palestinians.
Cleverly said that the protesters had “made their point” and were putting “huge pressure” on police. He added that the demonstrations in London, as well as those in other towns and cities across the UK, were “not really saying anything new.”
Ministers are concerned about the drain on police resources, with estimates suggesting that the protests have cost £25 million and caused thousands of rest days for officers to be canceled, The Times reported.
The government is debating changing protest rules to require organizers to give police more than the current six days’ notice.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign condemned the UK government’s “growing attacks on the right to protest.” According to PSC Director Ben Jamal, people will “continue to march in huge numbers because the genocide has not stopped.”
He promised to fight back against the “repressive environment” being “whipped up” by the government. Other groups that have joined the protests criticized the police’s response to the marches, which began in October, after Israel began its bombardment and military invasion of Gaza with nearly 30,000 people killed.
Chris Nineham, a founding member of the Stop the War Coalition, said that there were fewer arrests per person at pro-Palestinian marches than at the Glastonbury Festival or a Premier League football match, The Times reported. He accused Scotland Yard of “extraordinary hysteria” and “overpolicing.”
Policing Minister Chris Philp said that there had been 600 arrests at the marches to date, but emphasized that free speech and the right to protest were the foundations of a democratic society.
On Saturday, the PSC plans to stage protests at dozens of Barclays bank branches across the country, which has financial ties to arms companies that sell weapons to Israel.
Earlier in February, a group of pro-Palestinian activists blocked the bank’s Canary Wharf headquarters and protested with a banner that read: “Are you sure you want to close your account? YES.” They chanted, among other things: “Barclays, Barclays, you can’t hide, you’re enabling genocide,” as well as “Your profits are covered in Palestinian blood.”
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