Robert Buckland has launched a broadside against Lee Anderson, Suella Braverman and Liz Truss and said that any Conservative politician intent on stoking division “had better get out and join another party”. Buckland, the Tory MP for South Swindon and a former justice secretary, criticised his colleagues for “dangerous” rhetoric in the past week. The Conservatives have been warring over a series of interventions and remarks where Tory MPs have flirted with far-right sentiment. Lee Anderson, who was deputy chair of the party until a month ago, told GB News on Friday that Islamists had “got control of” Sadiq Khan and that the London mayor had “given our capital city away to his mates”. He was stripped of the Tory whip after refusing to apologise. Buckland told Broadcasting House on BBC Radio 4 that Anderson’s remark was “racist” and “repugnant”. “This man has crossed a line, very clearly,” he said. “A number of colleagues, notably Sajid Javid, me and others, noted this and expressed our view, and the party’s acted. “It is wrong to conflate whole groups of people that are based on race or ethnicity with extremists. To start to conflate issues is dangerous. If it’s being done deliberately, then it is absolutely unacceptable. Even if it’s being done inadvertently, it’s careless, it’s reckless, and it doesn’t help us deal with the serious issues.” The deputy prime minister, Oliver Dowden, told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg on BBC One that he did not believe Anderson was “intending to be Islamophobic”. He would have kept the whip had he apologised, Dowden said.
Asked about Braverman’s claim that Islamists were running the country, Dowden said he disagreed but that her remarks were “in a different category” because they were not directed at any individual. “I don’t believe that what Suella has said crosses the line in the way that Lee Anderson’s comments do,” he said. Braverman, a former home secretary under Rishi Sunak, wrote in the Telegraph last week that “the truth is that the Islamists, the extremists and the antisemites are in charge now”. Asked about her comments, Buckland said: “To then say that we are being controlled or that they are in charge is, I think, to ramp things up in a way that is inaccurate, unnecessary and doesn’t actually allow us to have a proper debate to confront these people on an accurate basis.” Buckland was also asked about Liz Truss, the former prime minister, who took part in an interview with Steve Bannon, a former chief strategist to Donald Trump, and remained silent as Bannon hailed the far-right figure Tommy Robinson as a “hero”. Buckland said: “It beggars belief to know what on earth was going on there … It is important that when people like this are being lauded as some sort of hero, that there’s challenge. “Any sort of suggestion that somehow this is a real conservatism and that people like me are Conservatives in name only is the opposite of the truth.” “What we stand for, proper Conservatives stand for, is bringing the country together and seeking to unify, challenging criminality and hate and extremism absolutely square on, and being honest and truthful about it – but bringing the country together, not dividing it. “That’s what the proper Conservative vision is. That’s what the Conservative party that I joined believes in, and anybody else who doesn’t agree with that agenda and wants to fight had better get out and join another party, because that is not the Conservative party that I and millions of others believe in.” During the 2022 Tory leadership contest, Buckland initially supported Sunak but then switched to Truss.
In an apparent swipe at Sunak, who appointed Anderson and Braverman to senior roles, Buckland said: “People talk about rottweilers or attack dogs in politics. The danger with having attack dogs with a licence to roam free is that sometimes they bite you on the hand, and that’s what’s been happening.” Dowden told the BBC that Truss “should have called it out” when Bannon lauded Robinson. During her trip to the US last week, Truss said she would like to see Nigel Farage become a Tory party member and suggested she could work with him to reshape the party. Dowden insisted that Farage would not be welcome. “I, like many hundreds of thousands of Conservatives up and down the country, have spent many years campaigning against parties led by Nigel Farage,” he told Sky News. “So no, I don’t support Nigel Farage to be joining the Conservative party.” There is speculation that since losing the Tory whip, Anderson could join the rightwing populist party Reform UK, which is linked to Farage. Richard Tice, the Reform UK leader, said he was not in touch with Anderson. “As far as I’m concerned, this appears to be an internal squabble within the Conservative party about language,” he told Times Radio.