Awkward moment Lee Anderson's dreadful views are put to his boss

The newly appointed chairman of the conservative party was asked about his newly appointed deputy's views and it made for an awkward radio segment.

Nick Ferrari put a number of statements Lee Anderson has made in the past to Greg Hands when he was on his LBC show this morning who stumbled when asked if he agreed with them.

It started with Anderson's food bank comments. “Anybody earning 30-odd grand a year – which most nurses are – using food banks, then they’ve got something wrong with their own finances,” Anderson told Times Radio in December.

Asked to respond to these comments, Hands replied: "Lee is a fantastic asset to the party overall, I am looking forward to working with him."

Pressed further, Hands said: "I'm not going to comment on things that have been said in the past," adding he and Anderson "will work together really well".

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Next, Ferrari pressed him on times he suggested it was possible to cook meals for 30p - comments that earned him the infamous moniker '30p Lee' and the time when, prior to his election to parliament, Anderson posted a Facebook video arguing that “nuisance tenants” should be forced to live in tents and pick potatoes - yes this really happened.

"I don't have encyclopedic knowledge of what everyone has ever said in the past," Hands said in response to Ferrari not asking for encyclopedic knowledge of what everyone has said in the past.

"What I am looking for my deputy... is to get on the front foot, put across the views of the conservative party, back up Rishi Sunak our brilliant prime minister, the whole of the team and be a team player going forward."

As well as Anderson's appointment ruffling feathers, Sunak's reshuffle, which involved breaking up departments and generally tidying the deckchairs on the Titanic, has been called a "kerfuffle reshuffle" by Andrew Marr.

We doubt it will be the adrenaline shot needed to get his floundering party back off the ground.

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