Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Credentials

Ashfield School, Kirkby.¹

Background

Lee Anderson is Reform UK MP for the constituency of Ashfield, having been re-elected in there in the July 2024 general election.² He was elected as a Conservative MP for the seat in the 2019 General Election, and served as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party between February 2023 and January 2024.³

He defected to the Reform Party in March 2024,⁴ following his suspension from the Conservative Party in February 2024 after alleging that “Islamists” controlled London, its mayor Sadiq Khan and the leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer.⁵

Anderson previously worked as a councillor for the Labour Party in Ashfield, having defected to the Conservatives in 2017. After leaving school, he worked as a coal miner in Ashfield for ten years.⁶

Anderson joined GB News as a host of his own show, “Lee Anderson’s Real World”, in June 2023, for which he is paid £100,000 a year.⁷ He is paid an extra £50 per month to display the GB News logo on his X (formerly Twitter) profile, according to reporting from the Guardian.⁸

He has repeatedly attacked net zero policy, arguing in February 2024 that if the UK “became net zero tomorrow” it “wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the earth’s atmosphere”, pointing to the higher greenhouse gas emissions produced by other countries.⁹

Anderson has been a vocal proponent of further fossil fuel extraction in the UK, including for the opening of a new coal mine in Cumbria, which he said would be a “win for working people”¹⁰ and “part of the net zero journey”.¹¹. He has also argued that coal is an environmentally sustainable fuel because “coal 100 million years ago was trees and plants”.¹²

Anderson has also repeatedly attacked climate activist groups: he has called Just Stop Oil “the biggest menace in our society”¹³ and accused their activists of glueing themselves to the Cenotaph War Memorial in London, which the group denied.¹⁴

Stance on Climate Change

March 27, 2024

In a video Anderson posted on X, he claimed that net zero was “nonsense” when talking about his electric lawnmower, which he said the electricity “probably … has come from Radcliffe power station about 10 miles down the road that runs on gas and sometimes coal.”¹⁵

February 6, 2024

Anderson attended the launch event of the Popular Conservatives, a faction within the Parliamentary Conservative Party, where he gave a speech arguing that coal is a sustainable fuel because “coal 100 million years ago was trees and plants […] so I’d argue that that’s sustainable.”¹⁶^,¹⁷

When approached by a journalist he also criticised the UK government’s goal of achieving net zero, claiming that it “never comes up on the doorstep” aside from when it is brought up by “the odd weirdo”.¹⁸

He added: “if we became net zero tomorrow, this country… it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference to the earth’s atmosphere”, pointing to the higher emissions produced by other countries.

Anderson argued that net zero would cost voters money, calling for an “opt-in, opt-out” approach to what he called “green levies” on energy bills, adding: “Not one politician can put their hand on their hearts and tell you how much it’s [net zero] going to cost.”

February 13, 2023

Speaking at an event hosted by the climate-denial group CAR26, Anderson said that voters are “sick to death” of hearing about net zero, which “was not a vote winner” and “never comes up” on the doorstep.¹⁹ At the time, CAR26 was calling for a referendum on net zero.

He added:

“Now I’m not a [climate] denier, I think we’ve got to leave our planet in a better condition than we found it in – look after your rivers, your seas, your oceans and stuff like that. But that said, it [net zero] is unfair on the poorest in society, because they’re paying the price.”

Key Quotes

September 27, 2023

In a tweet celebrating the decision to greenlight the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea, Anderson wrote: “Be in no doubt that even when we reach Net Zero we will still need oil & gas.”²⁰

September 9, 2023

Anderson criticised net zero policies in a tweet, writing that while “we should aim” for net zero, “what I struggle with is the cost of it all and the impact on people’s pockets”.²¹

August 1, 2023

In a tweet, Anderson criticised a Guardian front page story with the headline “Dismay as PM vows to ‘max out’ UK fossil fuel reserves,” writing: “Fossil fuels? If we are using them which we still will be even when we are Net Zero in 2050 then use our own.”²²

He added, “This means jobs, security, revenue as well as less carbon emissions? Who are these dismayed people?”

August 1, 2023

Anderson tweeted in praise of Conservative government decisions to increase fossil fuel expansion, writing “More oil, more gas and now cheaper beer”.²³

July 31, 2023

In a tweet celebrating the approval of hundreds more oil and gas licences in the North Sea, Anderson called the pro-climate activist group Just Stop Oil “the biggest menace in our society”.²⁴

January 23, 2023

In a video posted on Twitter from a coal power station, Anderson said the fact that the life of the power station had been extended proves “there is a need for fossil fuels still”.²⁵ In the caption, Anderson argued that “there will always be a case for coal until we can supply all our energy needs on renewables”.

January 19, 2023

Yahoo reported that Anderson, when being interviewed by Lois Perry, the founder of climate-denial group CAR26, said in response to a question of whether he would choose heating or eating:²⁶

“It’s got to be heat. You can live longer without food than you can without heat — it’s just simple biology.”

Perry and Anderson were discussing the UK’s cost of living crisis, and suggesting that people were being forced to choose between eating and turning on their heating due to the cost of green energy.

December 9, 2022

Anderson posted a poll on Twitter posing a question about Just Stop Oil protestors:

“Do you support the idea of fining these protesters a minimum of 10k if they are caught blocking roads or damaging property?”²⁷

December 8, 2022

In reaction to an announcement from Rishi Sunak’s Conservative government approving Britain’s first new coal mine in over 30 years, Anderson said the move was a “win for working people”.²⁸

Anderson repeated claims made by West Cumbria Mining about the mine’s plans to reduce emissions, saying it would be “the greenest coal mine in the world”.

He continued:

“The mine owners have stated that, I believe them. If we can have the greenest coal mine in the world […] then surely that is a lesson and a gift to the rest of the world. Who can argue against that?”

December 8, 2022

Anderson tweeted a video of himself celebrating the approval of a new coal mine in Cumbria, saying that the metallurgical coal will be used to “make British wind turbines” and will “be part of the net zero journey”.²⁹

Key actions

July 4, 2024

Anderson was re-elected as Reform UK MP for Ashfield in the July 2024 general election.³⁰Becky Morton. “Farage elected MP for first time as Reform wins four seats,” BBC News, July 5, 2024. Archived July 5, 2024. Archive URL: https://archive.is/6A6t1³¹

March 11, 2024

Lee Anderson defected from the Conservative Party to Reform UK, giving the party its first MP in the 2019 parliament, according to a report in the Financial Times.³²

In 2023, Anderson reportedly said to a group of Conservative activists in Cambridgeshire “Now there is a political party that begins with an R that offered me a lot of money to join them. I say a lot of money, I mean a lot of money,” which Reform UK has since denied.³³

January 11, 2024

DeSmog revealed that Anderson accepted a donation from Michael Hintze,³⁴ who is a key funder of the UK’s primary climate denial thinktank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.³⁵

September 19, 2023

The Huffington Post reported that Anderson had broken House of Commons rules by filming a GB News advert in Parliament without approval, and for using his parliamentary email address to send a newsletter advertising his GB News show to constituents.³⁶

Daniel Greenberg, the parliamentary commissioner for standards, told the Post that Anderson had “accepted that he had failed to seek authorisation to film on the parliamentary estate, apologised and took responsibility for his decision”.

May 15, 2023

Anderson gave a speech at the National Conservatism conference in London alongside noted climate deniers, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Frost and Toby Young, among others.³⁷

March 7, 2023

GB News announced that Lee Anderson would join the channel as a host of his own show.³⁸ Speaking about the channel, Anderson stated: “GB News is the true voice of the great British silent majority. I’m joining the people’s channel to ensure their voice is heard.”

September 4, 2022

Anderson contributed to an open letter written by the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, published in The Telegraph, which called on the UK government to green-light fracking and argued that gas projects should be “fast-tracked” in light of the energy crisis.³⁹

The letter stated that “Energy prices are soaring while 1,300 trillion cubic feet of shale gas sits idle under our feet” and claimed that ten percent of that amount “would give the UK self-sufficiency for 50 years”.

The letter continued:

“By not using British shale gas resources, we’re missing out on tens of thousands of well-paid jobs, losing billions from the UK economy while enriching foreign exchequers, depriving councils and residents of millions of pounds of tax revenue, and putting our country at the mercy of a Russia-dominated European gas market as we all scrabble for the same limited resource.”