Former Conservative Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi today defected to Reform, becoming the most high-profile former Tory to join Nigel Farage‘s Party.
The former MP, who held a raft of cabinet jobs under four different prime ministers, was unveiled by Mr Farage at a press conference in London today.
The 58-year-old Iraq-born politician and businessman was Boris Johnson’s vaccines minister during the Covid pandemic, but was later forced to quit government over his tax affairs. He stepped down as Stratford-on-Avon MP at the last election.
Mr Zahawi said Britain is ‘drinking at the last chance saloon’ and ‘really does need Nigel Farage as prime minister’ in a video message announcing his defection.
The former Conservative chancellor added: ‘I’ve made my mind that the team that will deliver for this nation will be the team that Nigel will put together, and that’s why I’ve decided that I’m joining Reform UK.’
Mr Zahawi once wrote that there was ‘no chance’ he would join Nigel Farage, writing in 2014 that he had ‘been a Conservative all my life and will die a Conservative’.
But he follows Tory MPs including Nadine Dorries, Danny Kruger and Andrea Jenkyn in joining Reform.
The former MP, who held a raft of cabinet jobs under four different prime ministers, was unveiled by Mr Farage at a press conference in London today.
He is the latest and most high-ranking Tory to see more in Nigel Farage than in Kemi Badenoch
Mr Zahawi arrived in Britain in the 1970s as a Kurdish refugee fleeing Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime in Iraq.
He has previously described how, aged 11, he sat at the back of a classroom in the UK ‘unable to speak a word of English’.
But he went on to make a fortune founding polling firm YouGov from an office in his garden shed, as well as building a £100million property portfolio.
His political career saw him first enter Parliament as a Tory MP in 2010 before becoming Chancellor little more than 12 years later.
But he was sacked by Rishi Sunak as a result of a fierce row over his tax affairs.
Mr Farage insisted the ex-Tory big beast’s move to his party helped to dispel suggestions Reform UK was a ‘one-man band’.
