Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Reform UK, the populist anti-immigration party, is being boosted by the government’s focus on extremism, senior Conservatives have warned, as communities secretary Michael Gove prepares a new definition of the problem.
On Monday Lee Anderson, former Conservative deputy chair, became Reform UK’s first MP, announcing his defection by claiming: “I feel we are slowly giving our country away.” He added: “All I want is my country back”.
Some Tory MPs believe Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his government would be better off dialling down the rhetoric on extremism and focusing on the economy instead in the wake of last week’s Budget.
“This is the kind of thing you do when you’re heading out of office,” said one former cabinet minister. “It completely plays into Reform’s hands. Why aren’t we talking about the Budget?”
Reform UK, the successor party to the Brexit party founded by Nigel Farage, campaigns on issues such as migration, extremism and the so-called “woke culture” and is a significant threat on the Tory right flank ahead of the general election expected this year.
Gove will on Thursday set out a brief new definition of extremism, which Downing Street said would ensure the government did not inadvertently provide “a platform, funding or legitimacy to groups or individuals who advance extremist ideology”.
The current definition, drafted almost a decade ago, describes extremism as “vocal or active opposition to British values”. Gove says he wants to update the definition to take account of Islamist and far-right fundamentalism.
The new wording, which is still being finalised, will probably cover the “promotion or advancement of ideology based on hatred, intolerance or violence or undermining or overturning the rights or freedoms of others, or of undermining democracy itself”, according to people briefed on the plans.
While the government is unlikely to publish a list of organisations that fall within the new definition for fear of legal challenge, it is considering whether to name some of them in parliament under parliamentary privilege.
Gove will be a treading a political tightrope, with some Tory MPs saying he risks pushing the issue up the political agenda at a time when Reform UK is polling at 11.2 per cent, according to the Financial Times poll tracker.
“Presumably people who were nonplussed by the Budget — which was decent — think only wedge issues will help,” said one leading Tory MP from the party’s moderate One Nation group.
Three former Conservative home secretaries — Dame Priti Patel, Sir Sajid Javid and Amber Rudd — were among a dozen signatories of a joint statement on Monday warning about the risks of politicising anti-extremism.
Andy Street, Tory mayor of the West Midlands, told the Financial Times that Sunak’s recent comment that “mob rule is replacing democratic rule” did not “fit with my world view”.
“The description is not one I recognise on the ground in the West Midlands,” he said. “I am absolutely determined that as the most diverse place in Britain, remember, this has to be the most tolerant place where every faith co-exists.”
Meanwhile some socially conservative Tory MPs, including Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, have warned that Gove’s definition could be used to curtail free speech and define what is acceptable in a modern democracy.
“Many people claim that gender critical feminists are ‘extreme’ in their belief that males should not be admitted to female spaces,” Cates wrote in The Critic. “One man’s extremist is another man’s courageous champion of an unpopular cause.”
The switch by Anderson, the MP for Ashfield, came after he was stripped of the Tory whip last month after refusing to apologise for saying London’s Labour mayor Sadiq Khan was in the grip of Islamists.
Anderson, speaking against a backdrop of union flags, said on Monday people who would “never integrate” were moving to Britain.
He said he would not be resigning from the Commons to force a by-election, arguing that a general election could happen soon. Tory officials are confident about winning back Ashfield at the general election.
Sunak appointed Anderson as Tory deputy chair in early 2023. He resigned from the role in January to rebel against flagship legislation aimed at getting Sunak’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda off the ground, saying the bill should be toughened up.
The MP has now joined his third political party in six years. He was previously a Labour local councillor before defecting to the Tories in 2018.
The Conservative party said: “Voting for Reform can’t deliver anything apart from a Keir Starmer-led Labour government that would take us back to square one — which means higher taxes, higher energy costs, no action on channel crossings and uncontrolled immigration.”
Pat McFadden, Labour’s election campaign chief, said: “What does it say about Rishi Sunak’s judgment that he promoted Lee Anderson in the first place?
“The truth is that the prime minister is too weak to lead a party too extreme to be led, and if the Tories got another five years it would all just get worse.”