Conservative MPs have not been offered money to defect to Reform UK, the party’s leader, Richard Tice, has stressed, amid claims that Lee Anderson was offered “a lot of money” last month.
Anderson, the MP for Ashfield and one of the Conservative party’s deputy chairs, was recorded telling Tory activists last month: “A political party that begins with an R offered me a lot of money to join them. I mean a lot of money, I mean a lot of money.”
The leaked recording, obtained by the Sunday Times, was from a “lagers with Lee” meeting at Cambridge rugby club, hosted by the South Cambridgeshire Conservative Association, during which Anderson said Reform would win “zero seats” at the next election.
The Reform leader, Tice, rejected the claims, saying he had “numerous discussions with a number of Tory MPs, ministers and former ministers who are absolutely furious with the complete betrayal of the government’s promises, furious with their failure to stop the boats, furious with opening the borders to mass immigration”.
But, he told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme: “Let me make it absolutely clear, no cash or money has in any way been offered. What has been offered is the chance to change the shape of the debate.”
Tice went as far as claiming that Anderson had “used the threat of defecting to Reform to negotiate himself the deputy chairmanship”. Anderson has been approached for comment.
It was reported earlier this year that the Conservative chief whip, Simon Hart, had reported Reform UK to the Commons speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, over allegations that the party had offered MPs who defected a full salary for five years – even if the politicians lost their seats.
Hart was reported as highlighting that Tories were being offered £400,000-plus “bribes” to defect.
On Saturday night, the Conservative party confirmed it now had 10 deputy chairs, including Rachel Maclean, who was sacked as housing minister, and Sara Britcliffe, the youngest Tory MP elected in the 2019 election at the age of 24.
The Conservatives are aware of the threat posed by the newly named Reform UK: the Brexit party, with Rishi Sunak warning disgruntled Tory voters: “A vote for everyone who is not a Conservative is a vote to put Keir Starmer into office.”
His remarks were echoed by the chief secretary to the Treasury, Laura Trott, who said she was not worried about Reform UK outflanking her party.
Reform UK, previously named the Brexit party and headed by Nigel Farage, has never had any MPs. In the coming weeks, Reform will announce hundreds of candidates as it seeks to build on momentum behind a stated desire to “destroy” the Conservatives.
Even at the cost of splitting the rightwing vote, Tice has said every Tory candidate will face a Reform opponent in the next general election, dismissing any rerun of the 2019 deal in which the Brexit party stood aside in more than 300 Tory-held seats after Boris Johnson gave commitments on a hard Brexit.
Anderson told activists in the recording that the Conservatives were “not perfect” and that he hated campaigning with the motto that the “opposition’s worse than us”, but warned them that a vote for Reform was a vote for Labour.
“I spoke to the leaders of Reform – they want PR … they are hellbent and want us to get hammered in the next election … all they want is a bit of power in parliament.”
At the Reform party conference, Farage joined Tice in accusing the Conservatives of copying their rhetoric on immigration, “but not the actions”. The pair have sought to paint the Reform party as an alternative for those on the Tory right who voted leave in the 2016 EU referendum.
Farage has been seeking to win over television viewers with his stint on the reality show I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out Of Here!.
Reform UK has only taken small proportions of the vote in recent byelections. Recent YouGov polling found that voters who supported the Tories in 2019 were more likely to switch to Reform than to Labour, and there have been suggestions that such switchers cost Sunak’s party the recent byelection in Mid Bedfordshire.
