Rishi Sunak urged to discipline Lee Anderson over Islamist claims

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Rishi Sunak was urged on Friday to remove the Conservative whip from senior MP Lee Anderson, after he claimed Islamists had “got control” of London and the capital’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan.

Anderson, a former Tory deputy chair, sparked outrage from Labour and some Conservatives after he claimed that Khan had “given our capital city away to his mates”.

“I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan, and they’ve got control of London,” he said on GB News.

Sunak appointed Anderson, MP for Ashfield and a former coalminer, as deputy chair of the Conservative party in February 2023 — a move seen as an attempt to shore up the party’s support in so-called “red wall” seats.

But on Friday Labour called on Sunak to remove the party whip from Anderson, who quit his role at Tory HQ last month because he felt the prime minister’s Rwanda migration policy was not robust enough.

“Lee Anderson’s comments are unambiguously racist and Islamophobic,” said Labour chair Anneliese Dodds. “Rishi Sunak needs to immediately remove the whip. If he is too weak, then people will take their own view of the modern Conservative party.”

Lord Gavin Barwell, a Tory peer and former chief of staff to Theresa May during her time as prime minister, said Anderson’s comments were “a despicable slur on Sadiq Khan”.

“In his first speech as PM, Rishi Sunak said he would ‘unite our country’,” Barwell wrote on social media site X. “If he allows the likes of Anderson to spread hate and division like this, those words will be revealed as a sham.”

Rory Stewart, a former Tory minister, said: “This idea that ‘London is in the grip of Islamists’ is deluded and it’s awful — an obsession that thrives among a bizarre and dangerous coalition. No…