Ashfield MP Lee Anderson labels Prime Minister 'cowardly' for calling summer election

Mr Sunak has called the election for July 4 and Mr Anderson – who left the Tories last month to join Reform UK – said the reason he was doing so was so he could avoid the embrassment of the good summer weather seeing even more migrants attempting to cross the Channel to Britain, at a time when Mr Sunak’s flaghship plan to deport illegal immigrants to Rwanda was due to get off the ground.

But, speaking to GB News, Mr Anderson said calling the election for the summer was proof the Prime Minister was admitting his plans to tackle and cut immigration weren’t working.

He said: “We’ve got a short campaign now, six weeks to the general election, we’re going to see good weather, we’re going to see more people crossing the Channel, this is an absolute nightmare for the Prime Minister.

"And actually, calling this election at this time is little bit cowardly, because if they’d gone much longer, to November or December sort of time, we’d have had a whole summer of illegal migrants crossing the Channel, proving once again that the Rwanda plan is not working.”

Mr Sunak said the election would be a question of trust and that he would ‘fight for every vote’.

But Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said the election was ‘the moment the country had been waiting for’ and that it was ‘time for change’.