Rishi Sunak urges MPs not to inflame debate amid Lee Anderson row

Rishi Sunak has said comments by the ex-Conservative Party deputy chair Lee Anderson were wrong and not acceptable.

On Saturday, Mr Anderson was suspended as a Tory MP after refusing to apologise for saying London Mayor Sadiq Khan was controlled by “Islamists”.

Speaking to BBC Radio York, Mr Sunak denied there were Islamophobic tendencies in his party.

He also said it was “incumbent” on parliamentarians not to inflame debate “in a way that is harmful to others”.

The prime minister had been criticised over the weekend by Mr Khan and former Conservative party chair Baroness Sayeeda Warsi for failing to specifically condemn the remarks by Mr Anderson.

Mr Anderson, who now sits as the independent MP for Ashfield, made the comments during a discussion on GB News on Friday.

He said: “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, and they’ve got control of Starmer as well.”

He later added: “People are just turning up in their thousands, and doing anything they want, and they are laughing at our police. This stems with Khan, he’s actually given our capital city away to his mates.”

Mr Sunak said the choice of words “wasn’t acceptable, it was wrong, that’s why the whip was suspended”.

He also told BBC Radio Humberside “Racism or prejudice of any kind is completely unacceptable, it’s not British and we must stamp it out where we see it.”

Earlier in the morning, Mr Sunak’s Transport Secretary Mark Harper was asked if Mr Anderson could be readmitted as a Conservative MP if he apologised for his remarks.

He said: “I’m not going to second-guess the future decisions the chief whip might make… a good start would be for Lee to reflect on what he said and to do what he was asked to do which was to retract those comments and to issue an apology.

“It’s entirely up to him whether he does that and then we can judge accordingly.”

Mr Anderson has not apologised for what he said but accepted the party had “no option” but to suspend him.

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Daisy Cooper urged Mr Sunak to “make clear he [Lee Anderson] won’t be let back into the Conservative Party”.

Labour party chair Anneliese Dodds said his words were “appalling” and that the “slur” had been directed at Mr Khan “because of Islamophobia”.

She also urged the Conservatives to adopt a definition of Islamophobia, as drawn up by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims.

However, Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch said the Conservatives had instead opted to use the term “anti-Muslim hatred” adding that the definition backed by Labour would create “a blasphemy law via the back door”.

Baroness Warsi hit back saying “as you are well aware the definition like the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition on antisemitism is a non-legally binding working definition, not a ‘law’.”

She also said the government had “dragged its heels on any work to tackle this form of racism”.

In 2019, the Conservative Party launched an inquiry into how the party handles discrimination claims, following allegations of Islamophobic behaviour.

The report found evidence of anti-Muslim views at local association and individual level but said claims of “institutional racism” were not borne out by the evidence.

Last year Prof Swaran Singh, who led the inquiry, said the party had been slow to implement some of his recommendations due to “political upheaval”.