Richard Tice arrived on a podium in the kind of faceless Westminster building where suits go to talk about workflow management and the carpets make it look like an 80s wedding, and boy, he looked cheerful.
Wearing the turquoise tie that is a signature of his Reform party, he had an important announcement to make. Everybody knew what it was, because it was obvious, but also because more than one person had taken a wrong turn on the way to the room and seen Lee Anderson lurking in an antechamber. The only element of suspense was how the big reveal would play out. Would this great Tory scalp leap out of a cake or – wait – what if they drove in in a white van?
“People’s concern and anxiety has turned to anger and fury,” Richard Tice began. “Nothing works. Britain is broken, and we all know who broke it.” Yup, I have no problem with any of that. Give him a chance, though; he’s only getting started. “There is absolute fury that the Tories have imposed on us, without any democratic consent, in complete breach of the 2019 manifesto, mass immigration.”
It wasn’t funny yet. Realistically, the bons mots wouldn’t start until 30p Lee arrived, but I still started laughing. The sheer brass neck of this oleaginous, monied blow-hard, claiming superior insight into the hardships and true feelings of the British people, seemed funny in the moment. Or maybe it was nerves, watching Tice’s hatreds build up piece by piece, starting with the easy bits (we all hate the Tories), moving through the body work (legal migrants, illegal migrants), towards the decorative, novel touches (Sadiq Khan, Hamas supporters lining London streets), until he had a working Meccano vehicle made of hate. Who doesn’t laugh when they’re nervous?
The crowd was divided down the middle; on one side, more men in turquoise ties; on the other, mostly journalists, like the two families of the bride and groom. The bride’s tribe, if you’re prepared to indulge this over-compressed analogy, were the “straight-talking men of the people” (you could tell by the turquoise); the groom’s were the liberal elite (you could tell by their awkward questions). The late anthropologist David Graeber described this dance. The right wing pretends to be stupid. The liberals make fun of them as idiots. Everyone who resents the cultural elite looks at them laughing up a gale and thinks: “I bet they’d feel the same way about me.”
The choreography is so screamingly obvious, so predictable, someone should just set it to music and we could at least save ourselves having to watch this posturing.
“I might not know a lot of these long words,” Anderson said, “but I know a few short ones. Unfortunately, this leads me to be labelled as controversial, but my opinions are not controversial. They’re opinions which are shared by millions of people.” What’s he even saying, this great man of the people, who shouts “bum” while everyone else shouts “antidisestablishmentarianism”? Which bit is controversial – that he is too dumb to make an idea hold together over two sentences? There I go again, with the sneering. There he goes again, with the pretending to be stupid.
“Who’s laughing?” Anderson said, pugnacious, dour, as he arrived with camera-clicking fanfare before the crowd. “Is that you, Harry?” He needs Harry Cole, political editor of the Sun, to be laughing, so he can pretend to be angry. Tice held him in professionally courteous embrace with one hand, the other outstretched like an end-of-the-pier turn, looking delighted.
Anderson’s speech made no sense. He rattled off some of the UK’s gifts to humanity – “like the Industrial Revolution, like railways, culture, vaccines. And we defeated fascism” – then railed against those who want to “erase our history”, those who want to “give our country away”. There was a lot of repetitive, nauseating pabulum about how normal people want their country back, and it was down to him to give it to them.
The pro-Palestinian marches taking place in London most Saturdays were “an angry baying mob”, he said. “This is a murderous, vile, wicked thing that we see on our streets, and the police are doing nothing.” Sometimes shoplifters are involved, though whether they are in league with the vile people who oppose massacre and starvation, it’s never quite clear. London’s Jews don’t feel safe, and neither does Lee Anderson. He blames Mayor Khan. “In the real world, my parents are watching this on TV every night and they’re disgusted.” It’s like listening to an angry baby.
Most of the questions afterwards centred on loyalty and consistency: as recently as 10 weeks ago, Anderson was never leaving the Tories, and now he is, and what would he say to colleagues? “When I found myself suspended” [as he was the first time he smeared Sadiq Khan, for having “handed the city to his mates”] “for speaking my mind, that, for me, was unpalatable. I cannot be part of an organisation which stifles free speech.” Well, duh, also, you’d been kicked out. So there was that. “My message to colleagues,” he said, “is, this time next year, they’ll be sat on the same benches as me.” Maybe … park benches?
Must not laugh. Must keep straight face. If only they would stop saying things.
