Do we like them?

Do we like Lee Anderson?

Our score: 2 out of 10. A run of his own harmful words about trans people, Muslims and climate action, with little real good found to set against it.

Lee Anderson is an Ashfield local and a former coal miner. He went from Labour councillor to Conservative MP in 2019, then deputy chair under Rishi Sunak. He lost the Tory whip in 2024 and became Reform UK's first MP, and has served as its chief whip since mid-2024. Three parties in about six years is a lot of changing of horses for a bloke who sells himself as plain-speaking and loyal to his roots.

On trans people, the record is his own words. In 2022, on TalkTV, he said he would not follow Eddie Izzard into the toilets, and PinkNews reported he misgendered her. A councillor reported him to the Met as an alleged hate crime. The Met said no offences were identified and took no action. In 2023 he called Rosie Duffield one of the bravest MPs and accused Nicola Sturgeon of dirty tricks over gender recognition reform. In a 2025 Commons debate on the For Women Scotland ruling he said “A man is a man and a woman is a woman.”

On the planet, DeSmog reported that he called net zero a “load of rubbish” and its backers lunatics. He also signed a 2022 Net Zero Scrutiny Group open letter. In 2022 he said food bank users could not cook or budget properly, and charities and campaigners rejected that. None of this is a lie in the courtroom sense, but it adds up to a pattern of dismissing both climate action and people on low incomes.

The recent stoush was in April 2026. During Starmer's Commons statement on Lord Mandelson, Anderson asked whether the PM agreed with him “he's been lying”. When the Speaker asked him to withdraw it, he said “I will not withdraw it” and was ordered out. Calling a PM a liar is Commons-banned language and it is an accusation, not a finding. Earlier, in 2024, a parliamentary standards watchdog found he breached bullying and harassment rules by swearing at a security officer, and he was told to apologise.

The good stuff is thin. His working-class roots, the pit and the council seat are real and well documented. But I didn't find a charity record, a cause he has backed at a cost to himself, or a moment where he stood up for a group he doesn't belong to. My research was cut short, so treat this as a thin record rather than a proven absence.

So where does that leave us? Faith, class and party aren't the issue here. The issue is his own words about Muslims, trans people and climate action, which he has doubled down on rather than walked back. A refusal to apologise is not the same as honesty. If you want a bloke who says what he thinks, you can have him. This page asks a different question.