What does the appointment of 30p Lee say for Rishi Sunak’s attitude to the working class?

He earned the ‘30p’ sobriquet’ after claiming that was the price of cooking a decent meal (nurses couldn’t budget, he claimed), then doubled down on the backlash by tweeting a picture of a member of his parliamentary staff with a detailed breakdown of her salary, relationship status and lifestyle as apparent evidence that food banks aren’t necessary.

He boycotted the England team in the 2021 Euros because they were taking the knee to protest against racism (Gareth Southgate kept a straight face as he said he was “very sorry” not to have Anderson’s support).

He backed “anyone but Rishi” for the Conservative leadership in the summer, endorsing first fellow culture warrior Kemi Badenoch then Liz Truss. And this week he messaged MP colleagues to say the government was “like the band on the Titanic”. 

So why has Sunak appointed the sort of blowhard one would normally expect to languish on the backbenches for their entire career in SW1A to such a lofty position? After all, it’s hardly as if he’s universally popular with colleagues: Sky News’ Sam Coates shared a message from one MP saying: “Lee Anderson is everything that is wrong with the Conservative brand presently. He seems to rejoice in deliberately provoking and making aggressive, simplistic statements that fail to recognise the complexities of the issues facing the country. If this is the new Tory Party, many will be forgiven for deserting it.”

To understand Anderson’s appointment you have to go beyond the summer, beyond his defection, even, to 2001, and a 21-year-old Sunak appearing on a BBC show called Middle Classes: Their Rise & Sprawl. Sunak tells producers: ”I have friends who are aristocrats, I have friends who are upper-class, I have friends who are working class – well, not working class.”

Anderson is almost certainly in his new position because, in all his lumpish, I-went-to-the-university-of-life, call-a-spade-a-fucking-shovel oafishness he appears to capture the cartoon image in Sunak’s mind of A Working Class Man. He needs to retain his Red Wall seats, has little to no understanding of those who inhabit them, but this guy must know, right? He’s a former miner. He must know what appeals to these people, be it saveloys, Brexit, Andy Capp or binary gender definitions? If the chairman of the party, Greg ‘Safe’ Hands, is the Minister for the Today programme, goes the thinking, the deputy must be Minister for LBC, the cabbies’ favourite?

(Not that Hands was particularly safe on Anderson’s appointment, saying he was “not going to comment on things that have been said in the past”, limiting himself, presumably, to those things which might be said in the future.)

The Tories have form on this. In 2014 then party chairman Grant Shapps was accused of patronising voters as he promoted the government’s budget. Shapps tweeted a picture that said: “Bingo. Cutting the Bingo tax and beer duty: To help hardworking people do more of the things they enjoy.” The key word here is “they”. “We” ski and drink wine. “They” play bingo and drink beer.

The rise to the leadership of Rishi Sunak, a man who views the working class as the rest of us might the creatures in a David Attenborough documentary – a strange and distant relative, at very best, with whom we share only the most rudimentary of qualities – puts rocket boosters under this attitude. The appointment of Lee Anderson, who would be written off as a two-dimensional caricature were he fictional, makes this clear.

One Tory MP told Politico the party should “not try and appeal to an electorate they clearly do not understand”. Too late, mate. You picked Sunak.