Khan accuses Tories of fostering anti-Muslim hatred

Sadiq Khan launched a scathing attack on the Conservative party this afternoon, accusing it of tolerating “blatant anti-Muslim hatred from the top to bottom of the party.”

In a fiery op-ed in the Evening Standard, the Mayor of London wrote that suspended Tory MP Lee Anderson has “poured petrol on the fires of hatred”. Khan, who became London’s first Muslim mayor in 2016, accused the Conservatives of not only creating a hierarchy of racism but actually “weaponising anti-Muslim prejudice for electoral gain”.

Khan’s attack come after Anderson, the firebrand MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire, sparked fury over the weekend when he told GB News: “I don’t actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they’ve got control of Khan and they’ve got control of London… He’s actually given our capital city away to his mates”.

While Rishi Sunak has avoided directly answering the question of whether Anderson’s comments were Islamophobic, he has insisted they were “wrong and unacceptable”. 

This afternoon, Tom Tugendhat, Minister of State for Security, went further than any Tory so far in condemning Anderson. “The whip was removed immediately [from him] because anti-Muslim hatred is wrong. There is no hierarchy in racism or in hatred, it’s all wrong,” he declared in the Commons. 

Anderson himself has doubled down on his criticism of the mayor. “When you’re right, refuse to apologise,” he said today, insisting that his comments were made out of “sheer frustration” with Khan over the lax policing of pro-Palestinian marches in London. As London’s mayor, Khan is responsible for the strategic direction of policing in the capital.

Anna Firth, the Conservative MP for Southend West, went half way to defending Anderson this afternoon. While insisting that it was “right for him to lose the whip”, she added that his words reflected “concern amongst people up and down the country about the emerging pattern of legitimate, peaceful protests being hijacked by extremists”.

What next for Anderson? 

The 57-year-old’s refusal to apologise for his comments means his chances of being let back into the Tory fold are fast diminishing. 

Anderson has already moved parties once before. He was suspended from his former role as a Labour councillor in 2018 after he hired a digger in order to fill a car park with concrete blocks to stop travellers illegally camping in it. He soon defected to the Tories and seized the red wall seat of Ashfield off Labour in the 2019 general election. 

Speculation is swirling that Anderson might be tempted to jump ship once again. The Reform party would likely welcome him with open arms. Its leader Richard Tice has already put out a statement in support of Anderson, declaring: “This gutless government and the Mayor of London appear to have lost control of our streets”. 

This latest row comes at a time when both Anti-Muslim and antisemitic incidents are on the rise in Britain. 

Tell Mama, which describes itself as the leading agency on monitoring anti-Muslim hate crime, documented 2,010 Islamophobic incidents between 7 October 2023 and 7 February this year. This represents over a threefold increase for the same period the previous year and is the largest number over four months since 2011. 

The Community Security Trust, meanwhile, recorded reports of 4,103 anti-Jewish hate incidents in 2023, up from 1,662 in 2022 and almost double the previous record of 2,255 hit in 2021.

Many MPs will be despairing that problems of Anti-Muslim and Anti-Jewish hate are once again becoming open to political weaponisation. And that, despite their best efforts, accusations are dividing along the familiar party lines.

Conservatives are accusing Labour of failing to address its longstanding problem with antisemitism or to stand up to Islamic extremists. Meanwhile, Labour insists the Tories have a hierarchy of racisms in which hate directed at Muslims is delegated to the lowest rung. Plus ça change. 

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