Anderson jokes people don’t want to go to Bradford quicker as HS2 under threat
A top Tory has joked that people don’t want to get to Bradford any faster amid rumours northern HS2 links could be scrapped.
Conservative Party deputy chairman Lee Anderson made the comment during a heated fringe event at the Tory conference, where he also joked that dictators were a "good idea" and ranted about "this poverty nonsense". The Ashfield MP was asked about the impact that cancelling the high-speed rail line could have on local services, including better connections between Bradford and Leeds. He shot back: "Anyone here from Bradford? Would you want to get there quicker?”
The room of Tory members and activists erupted into laughter and applause. But one man, who said he was from Sheffield, shouted back: “Cheap shot.” Mr Anderson added that HS2 was a “gamble” and “a bad gambler will always be throwing money at something”.
The loudmouth MP said local bus networks were the “main thing” for him. “I just cannot believe in this day and age that some people are so intent on fitting in a high speed railway, the length and breadth of the country, digging everywhere, kicking people out of their houses… People can't get from one village to another on a bus. If everybody could get to that, from one village to another on a bus, I'd have no arguments at all. I'd say fine, go for it. It's about being fair.”
Mr Anderson later joked that having a dictator was a “good idea” when talking about how to stop power-hungry politicians who “trample all over the party and the country” to get it. “But there are no good dictators, are there? Jesus might have been one,” he quipped. “In a perfect world, you'd have a brilliant man who would make all the rules and be fair to everybody and it’d be a great society but we don’t. Politics is a dirty business.”
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The Tory MP also played down "this poverty nonsense", insisting the UK is the best country in the world and there was "real poverty" in the 1970s. He suggested people struggling with hunger are posting it on TikTok or Facebook and moaning about not having food.
Speaking at a fringe event hosted by Conservative Home and UK In A Changing Europe, Mr Anderson said: "It's still the best country in the world, there's plenty of jobs, people have got money. I don't believe all this nonsense about, you know, you know my stance on the food poverty stuff... This poverty nonsense. Go in a time machine back into when I was growing up in the 70s, that was real poverty... It's nonsense now, it's absolute nonsense.
"Yeah things are tough, things are difficult for families, people are struggling to budget sometimes, but this is not an impoverished island. This is a wealthy country and the countries they are limitless in the UK, if you want something you can go and get it. You need to get off your arse and go and get it for yourself."
He claimed he could say things other Tory MPs can't as he had grown up in hardship and previously worked as a coal miner. He said: "Our food bank was my dad's garden. When we'd not got enough food at the end of week we had to go down and pull some potatoes out and cabbages and go and get a chicken and that was our Sunday dinner. It's as simple as that.
"We didn't go on TikTok or Facebook or moan and say: 'I've got no food,' because my mum and dad's philosophy was simple: 'They're our kids, we'll feed them.' That's how I was brought up. So when I talk about food poverty... and the 30p meals and all that sort of stuff, I'm speaking about that from a position of strength - I've been there, I've done it."
But he later appeared to row back, saying: "I think it's probably an unfair comparison just comparing life now to what it was in the 70s, although I do do it sometimes."
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