Leading Conservative politicians are pointing the finger of blame for the recent nationwide riots following the Southport stabbings at Nigel Farage in a bid to distract from their own failed records on migration. That, according to Reform (and former Conservative) MP Lee Anderson.
Anderson was hitting back against Tom Tugendhat, frontrunner in the Tory leadership race, who said on Tuesday that Farage acted in a “deeply irresponsible and dangerous” manner when he asked “whether the truth is being withheld from us” concerning the Southport attacker. Farage, along with his party, has condemned the violence of the riots.
Other senior Conservatives have claimed the Reform leader “whipped up” riots which quickly spread across the country following the stabbing, although he insists it was “quite legitimate to ask questions” about the incident.
Anderson branded Tugendhat’s comments as an attempt to “gaslight and shift the blame from [Conservative Party] failures and broken promises over mass immigration.”
The Tories promised when elected in 2010—and kept promising until ejected from office in July this year—that they would get a grip on Britain’s ever-more-lax borders, with former prime minister David Cameron even pledging to bring migration down to the tens of thousands. In the year to mid-2023, net migration stood at an incredible 622,000, leading to the biggest population rise in three-quarters of a century.
Anderson said on August 13th that “the British public voted on four separate occasions for the Conservatives to control immigration and after each vote it got worse, not better.”
The awful riots and social unrest we have seen on our streets have been sown by years of Tory failure. Politicians like Tom Tugendhat, have failed to listen to community concerns over impacts on access to healthcare, school places and local jobs.
His comments … once again show why the Conservative Party should never be trusted again.
The Reform Chief Whip also described the Tory attempt to win back votes by attacking his insurgent party as “arrogant.”
Tugendhat, along with other Tory leadership contenders, has ruled out admitting Farage to the Conservative Party should he become the next leader of the Opposition. Farage, for his part, has said he wants “nothing to do with” the Tories.
