Rishi Sunak wants to bring Lee Anderson back into the Conservatives “sooner rather than later”, a senior party source has told Express.co.uk.
The Prime Minister’s decision to suspend Mr Anderson over alleged “Islamophobic” remarks about London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan has sparked fury in the party and led to a huge amount of criticism of Mr Sunak and his chief whip Simon Hart.
With the row still rumbling, on a minister told Express.co.uk that the Prime Minister had “needed to create some distance between himself and Lee [Anderson]” because of the way the former deputy chairman has expressed himself.
But the minister added: “Of course we will be bringing him back into the party. There’s no doubt about that.”
The row began after Mr Anderson accused the London Mayor of handing over the city to his “Islamist mates” leading to demands by Labour that he was thrown out of the Tories.
Mr Anderson’s comments came in the wake of growing concerns over the way Islamist extremism appears to be taking over London’s streets in particular.
Largescale pro-Palestinian protests have featured antisemitic placards including ones equating Israel to the Nazis, as well as the antisemitic song “from the river to the sea”.
Metropolitan Police stood by and allowed the words of the song to be beamed onto Big Ben during a parliamentary debate in a litany of episodes which have also seen the Met allow protesters to use the Cenotaph.
Mayor Khan is responsible for policing in London and his past links to terrorists and extremists have come to the fore again, including in Mr Anderson’s comments.
Then after the Rochdale by-election where former Labour MP George Galloway won on an extremist anti-Israel ticket, Mr Sunak himself was provoked into making a speech on the steps of Downing Street on Friday.
Mr Anderson had the public backing of Tory MPs on Friday when he was invited to a fundraiser by his friend and Bassetlaw MP Brendan Clarke-Smith.
At the event was former Prime Minister Liz Truss who gave Anderson a hug.
A number of MPs including former Home Office minister Robert Jenrick and Dudley North MP Marco Longhi have said publicly that the Prime Minister is wrong and Mr Anderson is “not Islamophobic”.
There are now concerns that Anderson, who defected from Labour in 2018 before becoming a hero of the Tory right, could now join Reform UK taking a large number of Conservative members and voters with him.
