Ralph Blackburn presents everything you need to know in UK politics this week.
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00:09 Hello, National World Politics Editor Rafe Blackburn here for another episode of Politics
00:15 Unpacked to start off your week in Westminster. So first up we have Lee Anderson, he's back,
00:21 well sort of. Anderson, he was first a Labour councillor, then a Tory MP and Deputy Chairman
00:27 of the Conservative Party, has now become Reform UK's first MP, the Richard Tice's
00:34 anti-immigration party. So a big moment for them and a big moment for Anderson. Like I
00:42 said, he was made Tory Deputy Chairman by Rishi Sunak, he was designed to be the Tories
00:48 kind of attack dog who, you know, said things that maybe were a bit too unpalatable for
00:54 Rishi Sunak to say on immigration and appeal to those, you know, swing voters who were
00:59 considering moving on to reform. However, eventually Anderson went too far and said
01:05 that London Mayor Sadiq Khan was under the control of Islamists. Anderson also said they
01:11 were Khan's mates. And this led to him losing the Tory whip and being suspended from the
01:17 party after he refused to apologise for his comments. Now, National World First broke
01:24 the story that Anderson had been in talks to join Reform even before he lost the whip.
01:30 And so since then, there's been much speculation about whether he was going to join Tice's
01:35 kind of anti-immigration, slightly insurrectionist party. And so yeah, now here we are today
01:42 at a press conference in London. Anderson announced he was joining Reform UK to become
01:48 their first MP. He said he was prepared to take a gamble on himself. And he criticised
01:56 the Conservatives for not being strong enough against immigration and for not allowing free
02:02 speech. He said he wanted to, you know, continue the culture wars. He said he shouldn't be
02:08 afraid to fight the culture wars. Now, Anderson has said he will not fight a by-election as
02:15 other candidates have or other MPs have done when switching parties. Most notably, when
02:21 two Conservative MPs, Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless left UKIP in 2014, they then
02:27 resigned to fight a by-election. Anderson said he won't do this, despite, you know,
02:34 previously signing a motion to force MPs to fight by-elections. It's not the first time
02:40 he's maybe been slightly hypocritical. He also said MPs shouldn't have second jobs for
02:45 taking an £100,000 a year gig with GB News. So it's an interesting time for Reform and
02:52 an interesting time for Anderson. It'll be noticeable to see how much this affects Rishi
02:57 Sinhak and also whether Anderson can win back the seat at the next general election later
03:04 this year. If you want to find out more about Anderson and the view from Ashfield, his constituency
03:09 in Nottinghamshire, my colleague Andy Dunne-Johnson, who's the deputy editor of the Mansfield and
03:14 Ashfield chat, has written an excellent piece on Anderson, which is currently on the nationalworld.com
03:22 politics section of the website. So later this week, Michael Gove is set to announce
03:27 the government's new definition of extremism. The government says it wants to, you know,
03:34 set this up to give people a better idea of, you know, who is an extremist. However, critics
03:41 have said this could clamp down on free speech. Now, this seems to have stemmed from the free
03:47 trip to Palestine marches we have seen pop up on the streets of London and across the
03:53 country since the war in Gaza broke out last October. And now Michael Gove and Rishi Sinhak
04:00 have both said part of these protests have been infiltrated by extremists. And Gove,
04:07 who will be deciding on the government's definition of extremism, has said he hopes it gives people
04:13 a better idea about whether they should go on these protests and who is setting them
04:19 up. It comes as kind of a theme from Rishi Sinhak, you know, he gave a speech on the
04:26 steps of Downing Street a few weeks ago about extremism infiltrating the country. And he
04:33 also came up with the slightly odd statement that mob rule was overtaking democratic rule.
04:39 So to me, it seems like Sinhak has kind of tried to build this up as a culture war and
04:44 a dividing line between himself and Labour. Now, ahead of the definition, which is due
04:48 to be announced on Thursday, three former Home Secretaries, Priti Patel, Sajid Javid
04:53 and Amber Rudd have all written to the government and urged them not to politicise this and
04:57 seek as much of a consensus as possible around this. So we'll wait and see with bated breath
05:04 what Michael Gove come out with on Thursday and whether it will satisfy some criticism,
05:08 even from Sinhak's own backbenchers. On Saturday, we will find out who has become the next leader
05:16 of Welsh Labour and therefore also the First Minister of Wales, the leader of the devolved
05:22 Welsh government. Now, the choice is between two people, Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles.
05:29 Gething was the Health Minister during the Covid pandemic, which was one of the times
05:33 when the government in Wales really diverged from in England, particularly around Covid
05:39 rules and this kind of thing. However, Gething has been slightly controversial during the
05:46 leadership contest. He had disappearing WhatsApp messages on during the pandemic, which was
05:53 revealed to the Covid inquiry, something which Nicola Sturgeon has also come under fire from
05:59 because people say, you know, it's hard to be fully accountable and find out how these
06:02 important decisions were made when WhatsApp messages auto delete. He's also received a
06:08 £200,000 donation from a Welsh energy firm which wants to build a solar farm on protected
06:14 land near Cardiff. Now, the reason why this is important is because in order to build
06:19 that solar farm, they need government sign off. And the £200,000 was around eight times
06:25 as much as Mark Drakeford's entire leadership budget was when he became Welsh Labour leader.
06:32 Facing Gething is Jeremy Miles, who is the current education minister and Welsh language
06:39 minister. He was part of the Welsh government joining the legal bid to try and stop Boris
06:45 Johnson proroguing Parliament during the Brexit wars. And if elected, he would also become
06:50 Wales's first LGBT first minister. So who will replace Mark Drakeford? We'll find out
06:58 on Saturday. It's between Vaughan Gething and Jeremy Miles. Just a reminder, you can
07:03 find all of National World's politics stories on our website on nationalworld.com/news/politics.
07:09 And you can also sign up to my weekly newsletter which comes out on a Sunday, summing up the
07:14 week and a few things to account for in the next week, which is on the nationalworld.com
07:18 newsletter section. Thank you very much for watching this episode of Politics Unpacked.
07:24 My name is Rafe Blackburn and I'll see you again next week.
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