Lee Anderson has weighed in and had his say on telling he should resign as Reform UK leader.
Last weekend, in a stunning reversal of his previous praise for the ex-UKIP man, the tech billionaire posted on his social media network X
Hours later, Musk then lesser-known Reform MP Rupert Lowe should take over. He wrote that the former Southampton FC chairman’s online statements “so far make a lot of sense”, although he’d not met him, in response to a user proposing Lowe as an alternative leader.
When the Express asked Anderson how he felt about the world’s richest man involving himself in the internal politics of a party he acts as chief whip for he replied: “People need to take a breath.”
The no-nonsense Nottinghamshire MP added humorously: “Or a breathlyser. I’m pretty sure we should have a breathalyser on our phones which you blow into and it tells you if you’re OK to tweet. You can get carried away with social media.”
The world’s richest man has got involved in the party politics of Reform UK (Image: Getty)
Anderson said he could barely believe Musk’s posts about Reform when he first saw them, but he viewed them in the context of the billionaire’s larger attack on political figures around the world.
“I thought he’d been hacked when I first saw it,” he said. “We’d been bigging him up, saying it’s great to have Elon on board and the next minute he starts putting these random tweets out.
“But he went through a period last week where he attacked every political leader. He wasn’t singling anybody out, although he was giving Starmer a lot of stick, and rightly so. It was entertaining.”
Anderson believes Farage’s response to the debacle was “dignified” and said he wasn’t relying too heavily on online discourse to influence British politics in any substantial way.
He added: “Some of my colleagues on all parties look at their social media feed on their mobile and go ‘look how many clicks I’ve got’. But, you know what, my mum and dad aren’t on Twitter, my sisters and my mates aren’t. These are all people who vote. It’s not something that’s going to win you the election.”
Anderson also played down any suggestion that Musk’s intervention had affected the atmosphere among the five Reform MPs in Westminister.
He continued: “Politics is a soap opera, in fact, it’s better than a soap opera. You’ve got all these characters and you never know what is going to happen next. I mean when I was in the Tory Party and Boris was in charge it got to the stage when I’d wake up in the morning and I wouldn’t put the news on because you just dreaded it.”
Discussing how different things were now that he was in Reform, the Ashfield MP said: “It’s more like we’re five big fish in a small goldfish bowl. Everybody knows who we are.”
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Anderson, who was visiting his Sutton-on-Ashfield constituency in Nottinghamshire when he spoke to the Express, said the Farage Musk row had been one of the hot topics his friends at his local pub had been talking to him about last night.
“Somebody had a sly dig about it,” he added. “They were [also] talking about Nigel getting attacked in the chamber this week, by Labour, which he was. But it shows they’re watching.”
The former Conservative Party deputy chairman, who turned the constituency from a Labour stronghold to a Tory seat and then Reform UK powerbase, told the Express the level of engagement in politics he was seeing at a local level was unprecedented.
He said: “We’ve got nearly 800 members of Reform in this area. When I was with the we only had 130. Bear in mind that 75% of our membership has never been in a political party before.”
Asked whether this growth could be translated into electoral success, Anderson replied: “If [] had told me Reform could win the election in 2029 when I joined I would have said ‘you’re barking mad’. But now, I think we can win it.”