Lee Anderson has revealed why he finally forgave Margaret Thatcher for shutting down the mines – but the reason is “bizarre”
The former miner, now Reform MP, said he has a “bittersweet” relationship with the former Tory PM.
“We hated her in Ashfield,” he told the Telegraph’s politics newsletter earlier this month. “My dad was a miner and my grandad, great-grandad, I followed my dad into the pits. We lived in the community that was absolutely devastated by the pit closures.”
His comments contradict Nigel Farage and deputy leader Richard Tice, who have constantly talked up Thatcher.
“For Nigel and Richard, living in the south of the country, the 80s was loads of money, weren’t it?” Anderson said.
“They were making s**tloads of money so everything was rosy for them but for us we were really, really struggling.”
Anderson revealed the “penny dropped” after meeting a Tory voter as he campaigned for Labour in 2015.
He told the newspaper that the man was able to use the right-to-buy scheme to purchase his council house, arguing he “no longer felt worthless” knowing he could pass it down to his children and grandchildren.
The scheme has long been criticised as critics say governments have not been able to keep up with demand, leaving private landlords to give poorer conditions and higher prices to tenants
Alan Murie of the University of Birmingham has previously said: “If there had been a sufficient attempt to sustain investment in social housing and to reinvest capital receipts in social rented homes, the impacts of right to buy could have been offset. The problem has not been right to buy as such, but because right to buy has continued alongside other policy failures.”
James Prestwich of the Chartered Institute of Housing said: “ An urgent rethink is needed on its future.”