Bruce Anderson

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Bruce Anderson is a United Kingdom conservative political columnist. Formerly political editor of The Spectator and contributor to the Daily Mail, he now writes for The Independent, although his political position is typically different from the paper's editorial line.

[edit] Political stance

He generally supports the Conservative Party and its current leader, David Cameron, whom he supported as party leader from an early stage.

While he generally disagrees with most of the government's actions, he sometimes writes articles which give support to ideas typical of Tony Blair and his party. These include reform of the justice system and prisons, reviewing the Human Rights Act as well as an open consideration of potential power sources for the UK.

However, he has also been critical of New Labour and Tony Blair, suggesting that Blair should be imprisoned for selling peerages. He has denied the reality of global warming (whereas the paper he writes for has often called for action to tackle it, arguably more so than any of its rivals) and was the intellectual inspiration for Michael Howard's policy of withdrawing from the UN Convention on Refugees.

He is known as 'The Brute' by Private Eye because of his rough manner.

[edit] Controversy

He spurred controversy for claiming that the deaths in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina were the result of a "culture of dependency" among African Americans which discoraged work and promoted "laziness" and "dysfunction."