Tory chairman Greg Hands backs his deputy Lee Anderson

2023-02-12

‘Great assets to the party’: Tory chairman Greg Hands backs his deputy Lee Anderson amid row over his support for the death penalty and praises ‘amazing campaigner’ Boris Johnson

Lee Anderson sparked controversy after calling for return of the death penalty
Greg Hands said he recognises that a big proportion of British public support it
Read more: Top Tories defend new deputy chief Lee Anderson in penalty row

It was an eye-catching start for new Tory Party chairman Greg Hands, appointed to build a team capable of overhauling Sir Keir Starmer’s daunting opinion-poll lead in the space of 18 months.

Lee Anderson, the comically outspoken Ashfield MP appointed Mr Hands’s deputy, crashed to the top of the news agenda by calling for the return of the death penalty and picking a fight with a local radio host who questioned his honesty.

‘He is a great asset to the party,’ insists Mr Hands of the former miner who has become the most high-profile of the Red Wall MPs whose seats in the North and Midlands will be pivotal to the Tories’ chances at next year’s Election.

But does he agree with Mr Anderson’s view that executions have a ‘100 per cent success rate’ in stopping reoffending?

‘I am not in favour of it [the death penalty] but I also recognise that a big part of the British population believe in the death penalty, it is not a fringe view and we are a broad church in the Conservative Party. I think Lee Anderson and I represent part of our broad church,’ says Mr Hands, a multi-lingual Remain supporter with a German wife who will have to work in tandem with arch-Brexiteer Mr Anderson.

It was an eye-catching start for new Tory Party chairman Greg Hands (pictured), appointed to build a team capable of overhauling Sir Keir Starmer ’s daunting opinion-poll lead in the space of 18 months

Lee Anderson (pictured), the comically outspoken Ashfield MP appointed Mr Hands’s deputy, crashed to the top of the news agenda by calling for the return of the death penalty

Problematically for Mr Hands, that same church will also have to accommodate the gravitational force which is Boris Johnson.

‘Boris is a great asset,’ says Mr Hands, a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury whose Fulham seat is vulnerable to Labour’s surge in the capital. ‘Boris is somebody I’d like to deploy for the party. I worked really well with him as Mayor of London. He is an amazing campaigner… he can get involved at a local and at a wider level’.

Mr Hands – who tells a Channel 4 documentary this week that he believes a Russian spy tried to recruit him at a Tory event in 2004 – was appointed after Nadhim Zahawi was sacked in a tax furore.

Labour’s win in the West Lancashire by-election on Thursday shows the scale of Mr Hands’ task, as they drubbed the Tories with a ten per cent swing.

Tories are braced for fresh losses at council elections in May, with modelling showing they could lose more than 200 MPs at the Election.

Asked why there has not been an electoral ‘bounce’ from Mr Sunak’s premiership, Mr Hands says: ‘We’ve come off the bottom but there’s clearly a lot of work to be done.’

He has an embryonic strategy to stop Labour’s march to power – a combination of highlighting the presence of hard-Left Corbynistas with the hope that voters will trust Mr Sunak on the economy more than Sir Keir Starmer, plus a determination not to dwell on Tory infighting.

Liz Truss has re-entered the fray with a defence of tax-cutting plans which led to her being turfed out of No 10. Was her intervention helpful? ‘We represent a broad coalition across the party and Liz is very much within that,’ says Mr Hands.

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