Zia Yusuf quitting shows Farage cannot lead a team, again
The resignation of the party’s chairman is a serious setback for the insurgent party.
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For Reform, it was all going so well. The party is riding high, leading in the opinion polls and even breaking through in Scotland where it has hitherto been about as popular as a Margaret Thatcher impersonator turning up at the Scottish Trades Union Congress annual bunfight to deliver the Iron Lady’s greatest hits as an after dinner speech. So concerned has Number 10 become by the rise of Reform that in recent months Labour strategy has been retooled, making taking on Farage the priority. Meanwhile, the political conversation in Westminster and Whitehall is dominated by debate about whether or not the old two party system is about to be smashed. Could the unimaginable be in prospect? Do we need to think about what a Reform government - an actual Reform government - might look like? What could possibly go wrong?
And then Zia Yusuf resigned.
Okay, Zia who? According to the old political joke, Mr Yusuf is not a household name even in his old household. But that is unfair. Even if most British voters could not identify Yusuf, he was absolutely central to Reform efforts to professionalise the party as it makes a bid for power, capitalising on voter discontent with the legacy parties.
Nigel Farage made the businessman party chairman and charged him with turning a protest party into a party capable of taking power and implementing a manifesto. Indeed, the success of the party’s recent local elections campaign, where Reform won 667 council seats (41% of those being contested) and control of a number of local authorities, was attributed in part to Yusuf’s organisational endeavours.
Ahead of the next general election, the plan had been for him to create a proper policy-making process geared to constructing a coherent manifesto and a government in waiting in the form of a shadow cabinet capable of convincing voters. It is one thing to be a protest party hoovering up votes from a British electorate that is furious about everything, and quite another to convince sufficient voters there is a plan worth backing. The Reform spin was that the wealthy young Yusuf, with his business background and can do attitude, was the man to do it.
This evening, Yusuf quit on Farage. On X/Twitter he said:
“11 months ago I became Chairman of Reform. I’ve worked full time as a volunteer to take the party from 14 to 30%, quadrupled its membership and delivered historic electoral results. I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time, and hereby resign the office.”
Resentment inside Reform had been building. Earlier in the day, Yusuf had criticised a question asked attacked by Sarah Pochin, a Reform MP, at PMQs when she suggested the Burka should be banned. Yusuf responded on social media:
“Nothing to do with me. Had no idea about the question nor that it wasn’t policy. Busy with other stuff. I do think it’s dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn’t do.”
There had also been reports earlier today suggesting Yusuf had been demoted by Farage, which meant being put in charge of the party’s DOGE efforts to find waste in local government. This placement showed that Farage, for all his increasing grandiosity, still has a sense of humour. DOGE was the failed project created by Elon Musk in the US to make major cuts in the federal government. Musk in his pomp called for Farage to be replaced in favour of a new Reform leader. Now, Farage was forcing rising star Yusuf to take on a toytown version of Elon Musk’s failed project.
Incidentally, on local government waste Reform will find out that the horrible reality is councils in Britain are broke because local authority funding is a mess and with an ageing population ever greater chunks of the budget are consumed by providing social care.
Anyway, the departure of Yusuf illustrates, again, that Nigel Farage cannot deal with robust challenge and cannot run a team. Since the 2024 general election, he has already lost one MP, Rupert Lowe, who disagreed with the glorious leader’s strategy. Now, the party chairman has walked.
This mattered hardly at all when the populist Reform was a lean and mean insurgent trying to break through. The party now claims that Farage is a potential Prime Minister. As a result, Reform will soon be held to a higher standard and face a lot of questions. Those questions will include the following, although there will be others. What’s the plan for the national finances? How will public services be reformed? Beyond the rhetoric, what would Reform actually do to stop the boats and control immigration? And is a flighty Farage someone capable of handling the day to day responsibility of being Prime Minister?
The person who was brought in to answer these questions and prepare a plan has just said that getting a Reform government elected is not a good use of his time. The implication is fairly obvious.
Brexit, was a referendum on immigration, dressed up as a debate about tariffs. Reform is the party you vote for if you're uncomfortable with the Islamisation of the UK. It seemed unsustainable to me that they could have a Muslim chairman. But as we're all too polite, we'll pretend it's about something else.