Former Conservative Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi has defected to Reform UK.
Party leader for Reform UK, Nigel Farage unveiled Zahawi’s defection at a press conference, making him one of around 20 former Tory Members of Parliament to join the party.
As he outlined why he was joining Nigel Farage’s Party, Zahawi said that he felt the UK had reached a “dark and dangerous” moment, and the country needed “a glorious revolution.”
Speaking at the press conference, Zahawi said that problems with free speech “on X or even just down the pub” was one of the reasons he was joining Reform.
He cited an “over-powerful” civil service and quangos that he said had been started under Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair and continued under his own Conservative government, adding that he shared some of the blame for “constitutional vandalism” and “our failure to take back control over the entrenched, unelected bureaucracy.”
He added there had been major failures with mass migration and “bad, virtue-signalling legislation that has made us less competitive and less prosperous.”
Farage insisted that this latest Tory defection did not mean Reform was becoming the Conservatives 2.0.
Farage went on to say that, in the upcoming May elections for Holyrood, the Welsh Senedd, and local elections across England, the Conservatives “will cease to be a national political party.”
He added that there were “plenty” of current Conservative Members of Parliament asking about joining Reform and some were not being accepted, but he said that Zahawi believed “in what we’re doing” and also has the necessary “conviction.”
Zahawi was Chancellor for two months under Boris Johnson and served as a Government Minister from 2018 to 2023.
As well as his two months as Chancellor at the end of Boris Johnson’s time as Prime Minister, Zahawi was Education Secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and chairman of the Conservative Party.
He was sacked from that last position by Rishi Sunak in January 2023 after the Prime Minister’s independent ethics adviser found that he had broken ministerial rules by failing to disclose that his tax affairs were under investigation by HMRC.
In November 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, he was appointed vaccines Minister and oversaw the rollout of the corona virus vaccine programme for nearly a year.
Zahawi was Education Secretary from September 2021 to July 2022, and his short stint as Chancellor of the exchequer came between July and September 2022.
Zahawi was a candidate to succeed Johnson as Prime Minister in 2022 but only attracted the support of 25 of his colleagues and was eliminated in the first round of the leadership contest which Liz Truss won.
Reform UK Deemed Retirement Home For Conservative Ministers
Liberal Democrat MP in his old constituency of Stratford-on-Avon, Manuela Perteghella, said, “Reform is becoming a retirement home for disgraced former Conservative Ministers.”
The Labour Party Chair, MP Anna Turley, said that Zahawi was “a discredited and disgraced politician” who had previously “repeatedly lambasted his new boss over his divisive and extreme rhetoric.”
“This shameless scurry of yet another failed Tory over to Reform will tell people everything they need to know about both of them.”
Anna Turley
A Conservative Spokesman said that Reform was “fast becoming the party of has-been politicians looking for their next gravy train.”
“Their latest recruit used to say he’d be ‘frightened to live in a country’ run by Nigel Farage, which shows the level of loyalty for sale. Reform want higher welfare spending and higher taxes. They are a one-man band with no plan for our country.”
Conservative Spokesman
The Spokesman asserted that under Kemi Badenoch the Conservatives are demonstrating that they have the plan, the competence and the team “to get Britain working again.”
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