Oliver Dowden: ‘Words matter’ in Lee Anderson Islamophobia row

Lee Anderson was stripped of the Tory whip yestereday after refusing to apologise for remarks in which he claimed ‘Islamists’ had ‘control of Khan, and… control of London’. Speaking to Laura Kuenssberg on the BBC, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden said ‘words matter’, and that Sunak was right to take action.

However, Dowden was uncomfortable when asked repeatedly to state whether he himself thought Anderson’s comments were Islamophobic, saying only that ‘they could be taken in that way’. Dowden suggested that Anderson would have kept his job if he had apologised for his comments, and was keen to turn the focus onto concern over a rise in anti-Semitism in the country. 

Dowden: Braverman’s ‘Islamist’ remarks are ‘in a different category’

Kuenssberg then showed Dowden a sentence from an article Suella Braverman wrote for the Telegraph in which she claimed ‘the Islamists… are in charge now’. Kuenssberg asked Dowden if there was any difference between her comments and those of Lee Anderson.