“I just find it absolutely astounding, actually, that you are sitting here and even legitimising this promotion."

A BBC Question Time audience member has taken the Tories apart after Prime Minister Rishi Sunak appointed Lee Anderson as deputy chair of the party.

Anderson, who is no stranger to controversy and who earlier this week said he was in favour of bringing back the death penalty, has also claimed in the past that people who use foodbanks need to learn how to cook and budget, was made deputy chair after Sunak reshuffled his cabinet.

Tory minister George Freeman sought to defend Anderson’s appointment for which he was rightly held to account.

The audience member told the panel: “I just find it absolutely astounding, actually, that you are sitting here and even legitimising this promotion.

“One of the overwhelming sentiments that came out of the shambles that was the Liz Truss administration, one of the arguments against giving the electorate the general election that polling was showing they were absolutely screaming out for, was that actually the Tory party would have been decimated and there would have been no effective opposition.

“And the idea was that even the Tory backbenchers were saying that Rishi Sunak should have time to clear the reputation of the party, pull things back together, because we do work in a two-party system.

“Since that time, we have seen the home secretary peddling dangerous right-wing rhetoric. We have seen Jonathan Gullis shouting abuse across the floor to vulnerable abducted children. And now with the promotion of Lee Anderson as well.

“And the fact that anybody can sit there and defend that and be happy to sit in another round of musical chairs in the (cabinet), I just think is frankly appalling.”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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