We're now hearing from the prime minister's official spokesman, who has reiterated Rishi Sunak's position that "anti-Muslim hatred in any form" will not be tolerated.

The spokesman was asked repeatedly why Rishi Sunak didn't refer to Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hate when responding to Lee Anderson's comments.

The Downing Street spokesman said:

But the spokesman declined to describe Lee Anderson's comments about Sadiq Khan as Islamophobic.

According to the spokesman, the government has "issues" with the definition of Islamophobia put forward by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims, external, saying that it "conflates race with religion" and "does not address sectarianism within Islam and may unintentionally undermine freedom of speech".

UK's politicians are far from unitedpublished at 13:26 Greenwich Mean Time 26 February

13:26 GMT 26 February

Rob Watson
Political correspondent

Far from uniting the UK's politicians, the increasing threats of physical violence against MPs and the rise in antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents appears to have had the opposite effect.

Conservatives accuse Labour of continuing to have a problem with antisemitism and failing to stand up to Islamic extremists, while Labour say the Conservatives have a problem with Islamophobia.

Of course there are many MPs who despair at the tone and partisan nature of what’s been unfolding, but so far there is no sign of an end to it.

Beyond the immediate issue of political violence and the policing of demonstrations, for some, the events of the last few months raise questions about multiculturalism.

On Laura Kuenssberg’s programme a week ago, the Commissioner for Countering Extremism, Robin Simcox, said: “When parallel societies develop in one country, people are living parallel lives without any ability to integrate - generally I think that leads to a more fractured, less cohesive and more divided society”.

Those politicians who either broadly agree or disagree with the commissioner’s concerns are struggling to find common ground and the kind of tone some might say was needed for discussing such sensitive issues.

Or, as others have said, the UK appears to be going through one of those periods where some - and they’re not just politicians - are finding it hard to disagree agreeably.

Earlier this morning Rishi Sunak said that the UK is the most successful multi-ethnic democracy in the world, while appearing on a number of local BBC radio stations.

But anti-Muslim and antisemitic incidents have surged in the UK following the Israel-Gaza conflict, two charities have found.

Tell Mama, which describes itself as the leading agency on monitoring anti-Muslim hate crime, documented 2,010 Islamophobic incidents between 7 October and 7 February.

This represents over a threefold increase for the same period the previous year and is the largest number over four months since 2011.

And the Community Security Trust, which tracks antisemitic incidents across the UK, said that in 2023, 4,103 incidents were recorded, two thirds of which occurred on or after the 7 October Hamas attack.

This marks an almost six-fold increase in cases compared to the same period in 2022.

"The war unfortunately is impacting our communities here in the UK," Iman Atta, the Tell Mama’s director, told the BBC. "Muslim communities, Jewish communities are picking up the brunt of the war."

Image source, Reuters

Ashfield MP Lee Anderson's latest statement was drawn up on Friday but only just published, according to GB News.

The channel says it was held back as the Conservative Party did not think it went far enough because Anderson failed to apologise to London Mayor Sadiq Khan in it. But it appears Anderson has now gone ahead and published it anyway.

In the statement, he says that his original comments about Khan were "clumsy" but does not apologise - and has followed this up by telling GB News that to do so would be a "sign of weakness".

GB News' political editor Christopher Hope said on the channel a little earlier that Anderson had told him:

Image source, Getty Images

Lee Anderson, who has become known for his controversial comments, has been the MP for Ashfield in Nottinghamshire since 2019.

After working multiple jobs, including in the Ashfield coal mines for 10 years, Anderson's first job in politics was in the office of Labour MP Gloria de Piero working as a district councillor.

In February 2018 he was suspended from the council's Labour group after hiring a digger and placing concrete blocks to stop travellers illegally camping in a car park. A month later, he defected to the Tories.

In the 2019 general election, the Brexit supporter stood as the Conservative candidate for Ashfield, winning the seat from Labour.

His comments have often hit the headlines: in 2022 he suggested people needed to budget "properly" rather than use food banks, and last year he said he would support the return of the death penalty.

In February 2023, he was made deputy chair of the Conservative Party but stepped down so he could rebel against the government over the Rwanda bill.

Anderson is also paid £100,000 a year for hosting a GB News show.

Labour has issued another scathing criticism of Lee Anderson's comments about Sadiq Khan.

In a campaign email sent to Labour supporters, shadow deputy prime minister Angela Rayner writes: "Lee Anderson's toxic rant this weekend was racism, pure and simple."

Rayner says that the comments by Anderson - who has now been suspended from the Conservative Party in Parliament - make her "sick".

The comments are made in an email designed to drum up support for Khan - who is seeking re-election in the capital's mayoral elections.

Suspended Tory MP Lee Anderson has released a statement to GB News doubling down on his criticism of London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

GB News says the MP planned to release it on Saturday but did not because he was told it was not sufficient, as he did not apologise for saying the London mayor was "controlled" by "Islamists".

"I made some comments yesterday [Friday] that some people thought were divisive," Anderson says, in the newly released statement.

Explaining his reasoning for making the comments, he says they were borne out of "sheer frustration" with the mayor, whom he accuses of overseeing "double standards for political benefit" in the way that pro-Palestinian marches are policed in London.

"Hundreds of people had been arrested for racist abuse on these marches and we barely hear a peep from the mayor," Anderson claims.

He adds it was not his intention to upset anyone and the vast majority of Muslims "should not be blamed for the actions of a tiny minority of extremists."

Image source, Oxford City Council

Shaista Aziz, a former Labour councillor in Oxford, also spoke to Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 Live this morning about her experiences of Islamophobia, describing how she was racially abused at a bus stop a few years ago.

“He started using various slurs that I was called in the school playground. He lurched towards me to try and punch me. I was absolutely shocked and I was shaking,” she said.

Shaista now sits as an independent councillor on Oxford City Council, after she left the Labour Party over Keir Starmer’s stance on Gaza. She said she had been the target of Islamophobia both in the UK and abroad.

She recalled a holiday in Switzerland where “a woman started shouting at me and tried to pull my hijab off in the middle of a busy shopping area in a so-called sophisticated part of Europe".

“It’s not easy to talk about these things," she says.

“There’s simply not enough honesty here in calling anti-Muslim racism what it is."

Another Radio 5 Live listener, Altaf from Bradford, said his mother was racially abused on the bus recently.

“A lady didn’t let her sit down and made some remark like ‘she doesn’t want to sit next to people like my mum’.

"She was really upset by it all," Altaf said, adding that she didn’t feel comfortable getting the bus home and walked instead.

Altaf said his father, a taxi driver, was killed in a racially-motivated attack 42 years ago.

“It’s nothing new to my mum, but I thought in 2024 we would have gone past that, but it’s still an issue.

"Mum has been here for 45 years now, and she has always had this opinion that ‘we're only guests in this country'”, he said.

Altaf and his brother thought differently, but that feeling is slipping.

“It feels like we’re still outsiders really”, he said.

Earlier this morning, we heard from people in the UK who experienced Islamophobia and talked about it with Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 Live.

Ahmed, in London, took part in a Secret Santa at work, assuming it “would be innocent" fun, he told BBC 5 Live.

Instead, he was the subject of a cruel joke.

The tradition usually sees people draw a name out of a hat, and give that person a gift anonymously.

“I received a book: the book was titled ’50 shades of bacon’.

“Why would you send such an offensive book, and find it funny?”, he said.

He felt trapped, and uncomfortable flagging the incident at work.

“I wasn’t sure what to do at the time. I knew if I raised it with HR, then that’s potentially my career, my opportunities, all gone."

Ahmed said sometimes he finds it difficult to integrate.

“If people seem to have this deep thinking that you can send anything as offensive as that and do nothing about it, then I’m not sure what people are supposed to do," he concluded.

Image source, Reuters

Lee Anderson was suspended from the Tory party in Parliament on Saturday following comments he made about the Labour Mayor of London Sadiq Khan on Friday while discussing how the Metropolitan Police has handled pro-Palestinian protests in London on GB News.

Interviewed on the channel, which employs him as a presenter, Anderson was asked about a column fellow Tory MP and former Home Secretary Suella Braverman wrote last week, in which she said recent demonstrations in the UK showed Islamists were "in charge" of the country.

Asked about the remarks, Anderson said: "I don't actually believe that the Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they've got control of Khan and they've got control of London, and they've got control of Starmer as well."

He later added: "People are just turning up in their thousands, and doing anything they want, and they are laughing at our police. This stems with Khan, he's actually given our capital city away to his mates".

Khan, who became London's first Muslim mayor in 2016, is responsible for the strategic direction of policing in the capital.

Image source, PA Media

Some pictures are coming through now of Rishi Sunak in York today.

He's there inspecting a proposed railway site in Haxby, but was pressed on the Anderson row by local radio presenters earlier this morning.

Image source, PA

Image source, Getty Images

There's lots of reaction surrounding the Lee Anderson row this morning.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast a little earlier, Conservative MP for Southend West, Anna Firth, said she backed Sunak's response to Anderson's comments, saying it was "right for him to lose the whip" - or, in other words, to be suspended from the Tory party in Parliament.

Firth said she "wouldn't have chosen" the words Anderson used, but that he was "trying to reflect a lot of concern amongst people up and down the country about the emerging pattern we seem to have now, of legitimate, peaceful protests being hijacked by extremists".

She adds: “My great predecessor was stabbed by an Islamic extremist, whilst holding his constituency surgery, for the way he voted in Parliament. So I think Lee is trying to reflect a genuine concern.”

The former MP for Southend West, Sir David Amess, was fatally stabbed in October 2021.

Imam and interfaith trustee Qari Asim has told the BBC that Islamophobia is not taken seriously by British politicians.

"There's been a failure to recognise the nature and scale of Islamophobia amongst many of our politicians," Asim told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

He said Rishi Sunak "fails to recognise the existence of Islamophobia, anti-Muslim hatred, anti-Muslim prejudice".

Asim also told the programme that his congregations in Leeds "have experienced horrific Islamophobia in the last few months".

He added that, whilst he welcomed the action taken against suspended Tory MP Lee Anderson for his comments about London Mayor Sadiq Khan, Anderson's suspension was because of his failure to apologise - rather than condemnation of his Islamophobic remarks.

Have a listen back to Rishi Sunak's interview on BBC Radio York (below), in which he was asked about the Lee Anderson row.

In the interview, the prime minister said the suspended Tory MP's choice of words about London Mayor Sadiq Khan were "wrong" and "unacceptable".

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has just completed a series of interviews with BBC local radio stations - where he faced a grilling over the government's response to suspended Tory MP Lee Anderson's comments about London Mayor Sadiq Khan, as well as the Conservatives' plans to reallocate HS2 funds.

Here's a look at some of the key lines:

• Speaking to Radio York, Sunak said Anderson's words were "wrong" and "unacceptable", but that his priority was to "take the heat out of this situation"
• The prime minister added there were no Islamophobic tendencies in the Conservative Party
• He was also pressed on how the row would affect the party's campaign before a general election. He responded that it was "important that we [the party] maintain high standards"
• Over on Radio Humberside, Sunak denied there is a "hierarchy of hate" in the country - saying the UK is the most successful multi-ethnic democracy in the world
• On his plans to reinvest HS2 cash, he said the funding "is a better use of money" and would allow those areas where the cash was allocated to "improve journey times"
• He also spoke to Radio Lincolnshire about the plans, stressing that every penny that would have been spent on HS2 had been reallocated to transport in the North and the Midlands

This story is expected to rumble on throughout today, so stay with us for the latest developments and analysis.

Henry Zeffman
Chief political correspondent

Rishi Sunak appears to have slightly hardened the Conservative Party’s position on suspended Tory MP Lee Anderson this morning.

At the weekend, Oliver Dowden, the deputy prime minister, suggested it was Anderson’s failure to apologise for his comments about Sadiq Khan that led to his suspension.

But this morning, on BBC Radio York, the prime minister repeated three times that Anderson’s comments were “not acceptable, they were wrong – and that’s why he had the whip suspended”. There was no mention of his failure to apologise being the reason for Anderson’s suspension this time.

That suggests that there may not be an immediate path back for Anderson to be reinstated to the Conservative Party in Parliament, even if he apologises this week.

We have more comments now from Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a member of the House of Lords and a former co-chairwoman of the Conservative Party.

This morning she has taken to X, external, accusing Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch of failing to engage with the Conservative Party's work on tackling Islamophobia.

On Sunday, Badenoch - also writing on X, external - said the party uses the term “Anti-Muslim hatred” rather than Islamophobia, which, Badenoch maintains "creates a blasphemy law via the back door if adopted".

But Baroness Warsi says this is "complete nonsense".

She said that the definition of antisemitism currently used by the party is "a non-legally binding working definition, not a 'law'" - stating the definition of Islamophobia would work in the same way.

Baroness Warsi wrote: "Ministers do not even engage with the government's own cross government working group on your preferred 'anti-Muslim hatred'",

"The government has dragged its heels on any work to tackle this form of racism."

That's the end of the interview on Radio Lincolnshire and the end of Sunak's speed-run through the local stations this morning.

There was no discussion of Anderson's comments on Lincolnshire, presenter Scott Dalton instead pushed Sunak on local issues to do with transport and funding.

Next, Sunak is pressed on plans for an asylum camp in the local area of Scampton, Lincolnshire and is told he has been ignoring local residents and history groups who say they don't want one there.

Sunak says the heritage aspects of Scampton are going to be protected and that there will be more funding available for the local council too.

Sunak says he would prefer not have to house "illegal migrants" in disused military sites or hotels but that there is a need to house people in appropriate accommodation.