How many Tories is too many? That’s the question that Westminster is asking after the unveiling of Reform’s latest defector. Nadhim Zahawi, Boris Johnson’s brief-lived Chancellor of the Exchequer, is Nigel Farage’s latest recruit. He told journalists that the UK has reached a ‘dark and dangerous’ moment, and the country needed ‘a glorious revolution’. Farage is the William III to whom Zahawi is now turning.
Zahawi said he was also joining Reform because he has concerns about free speech
His motive, he said, was overhauling the British state. He attacked the ‘over-powerful’ civil service and quangos conceived under Tony Blair and fostered under the Tories. He admitted that that he shared some blame for ‘constitutional vandalism’ and ‘our failure to take back control over the entrenched, unelected bureaucracy’. Zahawi said he was also joining Reform because he has concerns about free speech, because Britain has major problems with mass migration and because ‘bad, virtue-signalling legislation’ is impoverishing Britain.
What role might this former chancellor have in Nigel Farage’s party? Drumming up donations is likely to be an important part of it. Zahawi, himself a self-made millionaire, told the assembled press conference that one factor in his thinking was Reform Treasurer Nick Candy’s switch of parties in December 2024. ‘I will see where I can help’, he said – an acknowledgement of the deep-pocketed circles in which Zahawi moves.
At 58, Zahawi is younger than three of Reform’s five existing MPs. Could a comeback to the Commons be on the cards? ‘No promises have been made. No promises have been sought’, he insisted, amid suggestions he might be offered one of the first peerages created under a Farage government. A more obvious immediate use for Zahawi could be on the media rounds, where his years of experience can help share the weight of media commitments for a political party moving from adolescence into adulthood.
Already, the Tories have released a withering statement, lambasting Reform for ‘fast becoming the party of has-been politicians looking for their next gravy train’. But for Reform, Zahawi’s character and backstory mean he is worth welcoming onboard. As Farage pointed out at his press conference, his latest defector is a walking rejoinder to those who hurl the charge of racism at Reform and its leader.
It was less than four years ago that Zahawi gave one of the best speeches of the 2022 Tory leadership race, talking of how his back story represented the ‘British dream’. Having fled Iraq, he made himself a millionaire as a YouGov pollster. In switching to Reform, he joins the likes of second-generation immigrants Laila Cunningham and Zia Yusuf. Farage’s aides will hope that Zahawi’s move shows how their leader can reinspire popular faith in that dream, as Reform seek to bolster their polling in the months ahead.
