After Lee Anderson was suspended as a Tory MP for claiming that “Islamists” had “got control” of Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, the coverage that followed was full of questions. Had the party acted quickly enough? Would the apology he refused to give really have been adequate? Were Anderson’s comments Islamophobic? Would senior Conservatives unambiguously condemn them?
The answers were unsatisfying. Somewhat to my surprise, I found myself thinking of Jodie Foster. When presented with an apparently uncrackable mystery in the latest season of True Detective, Foster, as detective Liz Danvers, scolds her colleagues for “not asking the right questions”. The mystery of Anderson’s baseless attack on Khan, made with no apparent sense of political jeopardy, will not be solved by asking other Tories whether they will now say that it was beyond the pale. The right question is: why on earth would Anderson have thought there was anything wrong with what he said?
