UK Conservatives suspend a lawmaker after he accused London’s mayor of being controlled by Islamists WPXI [Video]

LONDON — (AP) — The U.K.’s governing Conservative Party has suspended ties with one if its lawmakers after he accused London Mayor Sadiq Khan of being controlled by Islamists, as tensions over the Israel-Hamas war roil British politics.

The party said on Saturday that Lee Anderson was suspended after he refused to apologize for remarks made about Khan in a television interview on Friday. The action means that Anderson, a deputy chairman of the Conservatives until last month, will sit in Parliament as an independent.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and other senior Conservative leaders had come under increasing pressure to reject the comments, which the chairwoman of the opposition Labour Party called “unambiguously racist and Islamophobic.”

The controversy comes as the Israel-Hamas war fuels tensions in British society. Pro-Palestinian marches in London have regularly drawn hundreds of thousands of demonstratorscalling for an immediate cease-fire, even as critics describe the events as “antisemitic hate marches.” Figures released over the last …