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The irony is that Anderson and Monroe are doing the same thing: teaching people on low incomes that they can cook delicious, nutritious meals on an extremely restricted budget. And what more noble cause could there be? However, Monroe proselytises using the machinations of capitalism, through her book deals, whereas Lee mentioned his charity work on the floor of the House of Commons. Yet it is Lee that has suffered the inquisitional rage of the left, while Monroe’s process of beatification continues unencumbered.
So I felt it only fair to provide Lee with a right of reply on our media channel, Reclaim the Media. My deputy, Martin Daubney, struck up a friendship with Anderson after losing to him in Ashfield during the 2019 general election. Lee Anderson is a good man, a good conservative, and I would encourage any of our supporters in Ashfield to vote for Lee. We will not be standing against him.
It was also saddening to see a journalist, in the manner of a school milk monitor, seem to try to snitch on Lee for appearing on our show, complaining about lack of party discipline – a discipline that does not extend to supporting Conservative MPs in the face of leftist abuse. In any case, what’s wrong with speaking to other parties? No one seems to mind MPs of different stripes colluding when it comes to muzzling the press or stopping Brexit. I am very happy to reach out across the aisle, speak to other MPs about the things that voters actually care about, and I regularly encourage my supporters to vote for good Tories. I would even encourage my supporters to vote for good Labour and Lib Dem candidates though they are sadly thin on the ground.
Stephen Daisley’s article also missed the point of what Reclaim is trying to do with our media output. I see Reclaim as a movement: one part is electoral, another is focused on media, and we will be adding a third spike to our trident in the area of law, which I look forward to telling you more about in June. Our media wing, Reclaim the Media, is not a political party and never will be. Our shows are not party-political broadcasts. It is a place where we can have conversations sadly absent in the mainstream, in addition to podcasts, infographics, a new YouTube channel and an exciting roster of documentaries which we will roll out in the second half of 2022.
As the legacy media behemoths continue to stick to ever more political editorial lines, they are becoming political entities themselves. I am simply honest about it. And, in the spirit of the conservative value of liberal economics, I am responding to a gap in the market. A Vice for the right, if you will. What’s more, conservatives seem to like it. Our Facebook page, the platform we are initially focused on, has the best engagement pound for pound of any British political party, comfortably beating the Tories, whose followers and advertising spend dwarfs ours. It turns out that Conservative voters don’t particularly like having statues torn down, Net Zero and politicised police forces running away from left wing mobs, virtual or otherwise. It has not gone unnoticed that the police brutally suppressed anti-lockdown protests but took the knee to BLM and sent out their liaison teams to gently talk down the apocalyptical cultists of Extinction Rebellion.
I have assembled a small but very talented team at Reclaim, and our followers, views and supporters grow every day. In 2024, we will not be standing 650 candidates in 650 seats. But we will be placing good people in places where we have a decent shot. As our media output expands, we will change the conversation, and I know we have an audience who wants to take part.
Good MPs, like Lee Anderson will have nothing to fear, but our social media air war will target those MPs who do not stand up for British values and seek to make people’s lives more expensive, and their speech less free. And that will decide who gets elected. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
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