Lee Anderson has claimed he was offered a £400,000 package to join Nigel Farage’s Reform UK – despite new leader Richard Tice disputing these claims.
The ex-deputy Tory chairman stepped down from his role earlier this month so he could lobby against the amendments to the Rwanda Bill.
And despite this, he says he remains loyal to the party after turning down the six-figure pay offer from Reform UK.
Anderson, who is said to net £100,000 a year from hosting a show on GB News, has called on the Conservative Party to rally around Rishi Sunak as pressure grows ahead of a general election.
Speaking to The Sun on Sunday, he said: “We need to unite as a party. The common enemy is the Labour Party, not our own people.”
He added: “It’s a binary choice between us and the Labour Party. It has got to stick with Rishi — of course it has.”
Asked what the alternative to Rishi Sunak would be, Mr Anderson said: “Lose”.
A poll published earlier this month appears to predict Labour will win a major landslide. The YouGov survey, which predicts which seat will go to which party, sees the Tories all-but wiped out as Labour receives 385 seats.
Mr Anderson joined deputy chair Brendan Clarke-Smith and around 60 other MPs in seeking to disapply international law and prevent migrants blocking their deportation through individual appeals.
Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch is also understood to have privately warned the Rwanda Bill needs strengthening.
The amendments are unlikely to be voted through as they will need the support of the Labour party.
No10 has hinted that Mr Anderson could be accepted back as deputy chairman in the future. “It’s an incredible honour, when the oldest political party in the world asks you to do a job like that,” he said.
“But I’m not the sort of man who’s gonna be hanging around the gates at No 10 and pressing my head against the window, looking tearful and sad, and saying, ‘Please give me the job back’, because I’m not — because I’ve got a job here, representing Ashfield.”
