Beginning of the end or start of the next chapter for this Reform duo?

BRADLEY AND ANDERSON TOGETHER ONCE MORE

- By OLIVER PRIDMORE

IT may seem hard to believe, but before March 2018, few outside Ashfield had heard of Lee Anderson.

On the national stage at least, the MP has shot from relative obscurity to a household name.

March 2018 was the moment that Mr Anderson first began to gain wider attention when he and colleague Chris Baron quit the Labour Party to join the Conservatives.

Key to that defection was the then new MP for Mansfield, Ben Bradley, with both men posing for pictures outside the former's constituency office.

Nearly a decade on, the politicians have both been on quite the journey and, after a couple of wilderness years, have now been reunited after Mr Bradley's announcement that he had joined Reform UK.

That announcement in December marked the latest instalment in a tale which has seen these two men do more than anyone to shape Nottinghamshire politics over the last 10 years.

Mr Bradley's first major entrance onto the political scene came in the 2017 general election, when Mansfield recorded a shock Conservative victory after a century of Labour representation.