Ex-deputy party chair says on GB News Islamists control London as well as its mayor, prompting calls for him to lose the whip
The Conservative MP Lee Anderson has claimed that “Islamists” have “got control of London” and its mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Speaking on GB News, Anderson said of Khan, the first Muslim mayor of London: “He’s 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.”
The Labour party called for Anderson to lose the Tory whip. Anneliese Dodds, the Labour chair, said: “Lee Anderson’s comments are unambiguously racist and Islamophobic. 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.”
UNIONS called for an end to “rampant profiteering” as official figures showed food inflation remains at a painfully high 9.2 per cent in the run-up to Christmas.
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said yesterday’s larger-than-expected drop in overall inflation would not offset the real-terms fall in wages this Christmas.
She said: “Headline inflation might be slowing, but workers know their wages aren’t going as far as they did two years ago.
“Even the competition regulator now admits what Unite has said all along: that firms have been exploiting the cost-of-living crisis to raise prices excessively.
“It’s time the government and Bank of England tackled the rampant profiteering in our economy to get inflation under control.”
Responding to the figures showing CPI inflation slowing to 3.9 per cent and RPI inflation to 5.3 per cent, TUC general secretary Paul Nowak added: “Today’s inflation figures will provide scant relief for hard-pressed families. Prices are still going up — just a bit more slowly.
“Household budgets remain under immense pressure. And many families will struggle with the cost of Christmas, with food and energy bills sky high.”
‘The Bill only targets the less well-off. There is no equivalent surveillance of legislators who accept payments to advance the interests of their corporate paymasters.’
Prem Sikka is an Emeritus Professor of Accounting at the University of Essex and the University of Sheffield, a Labour member of the House of Lords, and Contributing Editor at Left Foot Forward.
George Orwell’s iconic novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in 1949, warns of a dystopian world where The Party or the government undermines people’s rights, independence and autonomy through fear and propaganda. Constant surveillance is a key weapon for disciplining people and shaping their minds.
That world has arrived in the UK, the self-proclaimed mother of parliaments. The new tyranny isn’t ushered in by some communist, socialist or military regime but by a right-wing elected government.
The Bill uses developments in electronic transactions and artificial intelligence to place the poor, disabled, sick, old and pregnant women under surveillance. It gives Ministers and government agencies powers to direct businesses, particularly banks, and financial institutions, to mass monitor individuals receiving welfare payments, even when there is no suspicion or any sign of fraudulent activity. No court order is needed and affected individuals will not be informed. The Bill enables Ministers to make any further regulations without a vote in parliament.
KEIR STARMER says that “if we simply patch up and keep going, then we won’t fix the fundamentals and that’s why reform is so important.”
It’s ironic that this line is deployed not to propose far-reaching change, but to reject it.
Starmer has broken so many pledges he must be running out, but he managed to sacrifice another commitment as an offering to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg yesterday, saying Labour will not end the two-child benefit cap.
Anger at Labour’s abstention when the Tories introduced this revolting policy, which punishes innocent children for being born into large families, was a watershed in Jeremy Corbyn’s run for the Labour leadership in 2015.
Seen as a sign that Labour had lost its soul, it infuriated activists and helped mobilise the campaign for a leader who actually cared about ending child poverty and standing up for the vulnerable. Starmer’s latest betrayal should motivate the left to fight again today: campaigns for the policy changes we need must be built from the grassroots, since nobody at Westminster is putting them forward.
An audience member on BBC Question Time last night offered a perfect summary of the wealth inequality in Britain as a result of the government’s politically motivated economic choices.
The comment came after a question on the show which asked, “is it a bit rich, for the rich, to tell us to accept being poorer?”.
This was in response to an insensitive, to say the least, remark earlier this week by the Bank of England’s Chief Economist Huw Pill who said Britons, need to accept being poorer.
…
“If you put the tax burden on the very rich, it’s like, ‘ok I have a slightly smaller bank balance at the end of the year’, but you’re still rich.
“And when I say rich, I don’t mean people on £100,000 or £200,000, we’re talking about people who have billions, you could never spend it in a lifetime, you could never spend it in ten lifetimes.
“Why is that you’re then putting the burden on people who have no money, it just doesn’t make sense.”
