This is the Guardian. It's been a pretty terrible and tawdry political week for most of us, but that Inveter

itself Publicist Lee Anderson is presumably thrilled to have been at the center of the news

for at least five days.

Now I will not back down, I'm sticking by my words and there's no apology coming from my lips.

In response to this very ugly Islamophobic outburst about what Anderson calls Islamist and the mayor of London.

Rishi Sunak has not really seemed to get a grip of the issue.

There's a difference between wrong and Islamophobic.

Were they Islamophobic?

Well I think the most important thing is that the words were wrong

they were ill-judged they were unacceptable. There's a very big question at the heart

of this story. What does it tell us about the state of the Conservative Party and

where it might be going next? I'm John Harris and you're listening to

Politics Week in the UK for the Garden.

Joining me today is Gavin Barwell, the Conservative

peer and the former number 10 chief of staff. Hello Gavin.

Afternoon John.

Right, we are going to talk about Lee Anderson, what he said, the fallout from it and what that tells us about where the

Conservative Party is going let's begin at the beginning I mean a lot we've heard a lot in the

last five or six days but the story it seems has gone precisely nowhere.

Let's hear where all this started on Where Else, GB News.

I don't actually believe that these Islamists have got control of our country, but what I do believe is they've got control of our country.

But what I do believe is they've got control of corn

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