Farage: Reform Party with Lee Anderson Will Become Labour Party’s ‘Main Challenger’ in Red Wall

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND - OCTOBER 1: Conservative Party Deputy Chairman, Lee Anderson, attends
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Kurt Zindulka

Honorary President of Reform UK Nigel Farage said that the defection of Lee Anderson from the Conservatives will see the populist party become the “main challenger” to the Labour Party in working-class ‘Red Wall’ seats in the upcoming general election.

Lee Anderson sparked political shockwaves throughout the country on Monday as he announced his defection from the Tories to the Farage-founded Reform UK after having been suspended from the Conservatives for suggesting that far-left Mayor of London — and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer — were under the “control” of Islamist extremists.

Anderson, a former coal miner from Nottinghamshire in the Midlands, previously served as a councillor for the Labour Party before joining the Tories over the leftist lurch under the leadership of socialist Jeremy Corbyn in 2018. He went on to represent the Conservatives as an MP for Ashfield and quickly rose among the ranks on the back of his popularity with working-class voters, in large part to his blunt-speaking manner.

While the defection of Anderson to Reform was seen as a major blow to the Tories, Nigel Farage suggested that it may end up being more of a problem for Labour, which has strayed from its working-class roots and focuses heavily on urban elitist issues rather than ‘meat and potatoes’ issues impacting workers like immigration and trade.

Speaking to BBC Radio 2’s Jeremy Vine on Tuesday, Farage said: “What Richard Tice and Lee Anderson and others are trying to do is to become the main challenger to the Labour Party in those Red Wall seats… even before Lee Anderson joined, in those Red Wall seats, Reform is pushing 20 per cent. These are now becoming three-way marginals.”

Although establishment figures often criticise Reform and other populist upstart parties as taking away votes from the legacy conservative party and therefore empowering left-wing parties like Labour, Mr Farage argued that Reform UK will focus its energy on convincing former Labour voters in the north and Midlands who backed the Conservatives in 2019 over Brexit.

“The objective Reform has is to win as many as those Red Wall seats as they can. And yes, that may sound ambitious, and yes I understand the difficulties of the first-past-the-post system, but the level of upset, disenchantment, and anger with what the Tories have done since 2019 can’t be mended.”

Mr Farage said that Anderson represents the feelings of a large cross-section of society, particularly the ‘Red Wall’ voters in the north of the country, who traditionally backed the Labour Party but supported Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019 to “get Brexit done”. The Brexit leader said that these voters feel like they were misled by Johnson and the Tories and that they are “angry” about it.

While the public was told that leaving the European Union would allow the government to take back control of the nation’s borders and reduce immigration, the opposite has happened, with illegal boat migrants continuing to flood across the English Channel in their thousands.

More critically, under the post-Brexit immigration scheme devised by Johnson, legal immigration soared to record highs, with net migration hitting 1.2 million over the past two years.

Mr Farage said that he viewed Anderson as being representative of many working-class people, who feel abandoned by the two major parties, and therefore are turning to Reform.

“The point about Lee Anderson’s journey from the Labour Party through the Conservative Party on now to Reform is that it isn’t just him, there are millions of people who have been on that journey. Think of the votes UKIP got in European elections, the Brexit Party got, at least half of those were coming from families who had been voting Labour since 1918.

“I think he’s emblematic of a very large number of people who feel that politics in Westminster and, frankly, in much of mainstream media, are having a very different conversation to the one they are having around the table at tea time and Lee stands up for that. And yes, he is blunt, of course he is, he’s a former miner, he doesn’t mince his words, and I find much of the criticism that comes of Lee Anderson is just London, privately educated, middle-class snobbery.”

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