Lee Anderson says Labour is now ‘a party of the shirkers’

Reform UK Chairman Lee Anderson has said his party is winning support from Labour due to the government’s policies on high taxes and welfare spending.

Speaking on GB News, Anderson said: “You look at small businesses, especially in areas like mine in Ashfield, the small businessman, the market trader, the little shop owner, the SME owner. They’ve been let down by the Tories’ high tax burden, and now with the new Workers’ Rights Act, it’s made it almost impossible for them to recruit people.

“They’re working on small margins, I go to some of the SMEs in Ashfield. I went to one a few months ago, and he’s got to find £250,000 extra now for the NIC rise.

“And I said, ‘Where’s that money coming from?’ He says ‘that from my staff’s pay rise next year, they’re not getting one.’

“So these people are scratching their heads thinking, ‘My word, this is not the party of the workers, this is a party of the shirkers’.

“Meanwhile, the welfare bill is ballooning. We’re spending more on welfare now than we are actually receiving in income tax and national insurance every year. The alarm clock generation, the former Labour voters who then switched to the Tories, are looking at those and saying to themselves it’s only the Reform Party that’s speaking to us.

“You’ll see the Labour Party now claiming credit for the legal migration figures which have come down…

“This is the irony, really. The Labour Party now are bleating on and claiming credit for bringing the immigration figures down, but this is the same Labour Party that just a few years back were saying immigration is good for the country, grows the economy, and all this sort of nonsense.

“But what we have to look at is what people are leaving our country. We’re seeing young people, just qualified from university, got a trade. Young, aspirational people, they’re going to places like America, Australia, Dubai. They’re leaving, and what are we replacing them people with?