Nadhim Zahawi has become the most senior Conservative to defect to Reform. Nigel Farage looked delighted as he welcomed the former Chancellor into the fold at a Westminster press conference this morning. However, the Reform leader should be careful what he wishes for. In fact, he should not have permitted Zahawi to join at all.
Zahawi may have a point, but is he entirely free of blame for the mess we’re in?
Since the upstart party’s founding, there has been a steady stream of politicians leaving the Tories to join Reform. Some, no doubt, are doing so out of genuine conviction and despair at the state of the organisation they are abandoning. Others resemble rats leaving a sinking ship. But even their admittance can still make sense if it delivers a blow to Tory morale.
Crucially, some of the high-profile defectors helped boost Reform’s manpower. Lee Anderson is a canny Commons operator. Danny Kruger is a big-thinking policy wonk. Both skills were previously lacking in their new party and essential for its development.
But the same isn’t true of Zahawi, a man who went from being a rightly-praised vaccines minister at the height of the pandemic to the last man standing as things collapsed around Boris Johnson. After realising that particular game was up and quitting Johnson’s dying administration, Zahawi went back in and backed Liz Truss. We all know how that ended.
This morning, the former MP for Stratford-upon-Avon attempted to deliver a Shakespearean monologue to justify his latest move:
‘To anyone trying to get a doctor’s appointment, to anyone who wants to express an opinion on X or even just down the pub. To anyone who wants their children to be taught facts, not harmful fictions at school. To anyone just trying to earn a living and not get crushed into the dirt by ever-growing taxes. Even if you don’t yet realise that Britain needs Reform, you know in your heart of hearts that our wonderful country is sick’.
Zahawi may have a point, but is he entirely free of blame for the mess we’re in? Ultimately, Zahawi looks like a man who leaps from what he considers the most politically expedient cause to the next. Like them or loathe them, that cannot be said of Kruger, Anderson or Dame Andrea Jenkyns.
Zahawi has baggage for another reason: he paid nearly £5 million to the authorities to settle his tax affairs and was sacked as Tory party chairman in 2023 after an ethics inquiry found he had failed to disclose that HMRC was investigating his taxes. We’ve all been there.
The danger for Farage and Reform is that the party increasingly risks look like a receptacle of Tory rejects, not the upstart movement they try and portray themselves as.
One of the key reasons people back Reform is because they consider them different to the other parties that they believe have failed. Recruiting those who have been part of that failure, particularly figures as senior as Zahawi, massively damages the vibe that has proved so alluring to voters.
The most worrying sign of all for Farage is that opponents are delighted at Zahawi’s recruitment. One Lib Dem MP told me that ‘Zahawi proved himself to be a shambolic operator in government, backing both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss for prime minister. I’m not sure Farage should be celebrating this particular endorsement.’
Residents in marginal constituencies can look forward to seeing a host of leaflets with Zahawi’s face plastered on them.
The Conservatives have been quick to pounce too. A party spokesperson told the BBC that Reform’s ‘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.’
Farage insists that Zahawi had the right ‘conviction’ to be welcome in his party. However, he ought to have outright rejected the defection, as he claims he is doing with some Tory MPs who have approached him. Reform’s leader should have done this publicly, too. The fact that he didn’t is one of the biggest strategic errors Farage has made in the course of his party’s meteoric rise.
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