Tories stress new deputy chairman Lee Anderson not speaking for government when he calls for death penalty – UK politics live

Latest updates: CCHQ and government say they do not endorse Anderson’s view

Good morning. When Lee Anderson was appointed Conservative party deputy chairman on Tuesday, it was widely assumed that his stance as a rent-a-quote reactionary would soon create awkward headlines for the Tories and it has happened already. Anderson gave an interview to the Spectator before his appointment and it has been published this morning. In it, asked if he would support the return of the death penalty, he replied:

Yes. Nobody has ever committed a crime after being executed. You know that, don’t you? 100% success rate.

Now I’d be very careful on that one (the return of the death penalty) because you’ll get the certain groups saying: ‘You can never prove it’.

Well, you can prove it if they have videoed it and are on camera – like the Lee Rigby killers.

If I say something that is supposedly outrageous in that place [the Commons], I get back to Ashfield on a Thursday, people will come out the shops and say, “You say what I’m thinking.”