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1 month ago
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Zia Yusuf has resigned as the chair of Reform UK after suggesting it was “dumb” of the party’s newest MP to ask the prime minister if he would ban the burqa.
Yusuf, a donor and businessman, said he was resigning after less than a year in the job because he did not believe working to get a Reform government elected was a good use of his time.
The politician, who is Muslim, quit after earlier having posted on X saying it was “dumb” for a party to have asked the prime minister to ban the burqa when it was not its own policy.
Sarah Pochin, the new Reform MP for Runcorn and Helsby, had pressed Keir Starmer on the issue in parliament on Wednesday, while Nigel Farage had also said on GB News that it was time for a debate about the burqa.
In a statement on X, Yusuf said: “Eleven 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.”
Yusuf has been working on Reform’s new Elon Musk-style department of government efficiency (Doge) unit looking at cutting spending in councils where the party is in control.
The tech entrepreneur Nathaniel Fried, who was brought in this week with great fanfare to lead the unit, will also be departing alongside Yusuf, leaving the party’s plans to slash “waste” in local government in disarray.
The Reform chair has been close to Farage over the last year. His departure is likely to add to the impression that the Reform leader repeatedly struggles to retain senior figures in his successive political parties without major fall-outs.
In a statement in response, Farage said he was “genuinely sorry that Zia Yusuf has decided to stand down as Reform UK chairman”.
“As I said just last week, he was a huge factor in our success on May 1 and is an enormously talented person. Politics can be a highly pressured and difficult game and Zia has clearly had enough. He is a loss to us and public life,” he said.
The withdrawal of Yusuf’s support will be a blow to Farage, although some of Reform’s membership had turned against him over his role in the departure of one of the party’s most rightwing MPs, Rupert Lowe.
Yusuf is widely credited within Reform for having professionalised the party, hiring new people, setting up more branches and making it run in a more corporate way.
However, he also rubbed some of the Reform old guard up the wrong way with his management style.
In particular, Yusuf clashed with Lowe earlier this year. This led to Lowe’s suspension amid allegations of threats towards Yusuf, which were reported to the police. A decision was later taken not to charge the MP.
Yusuf’s decision to go appears to not to have been long planned. He had been giving interviews over the last week about Reform’s plans to slash the state by £300bn, and to raise the birthrate by encouraging “fertile” British women to have more children.
Earlier on Thursday, Richard Tice, the party’s deputy leader, confirmed that Reform was prepared to cut government spending to about 35% of national income – amounting to almost £300bn. He told the Politics Inside Out podcast that it had been a “great lie” told to the public that more money equalled better public services, and it should be possible to return spending ratios to mid-1990s levels. “At 35% of GDP, things were working more,” he said.
Yusuf had also said over the weekend that it should be possible to slash the state by £300bn to £400bn.
Dan Tomlinson, Labour’s mission champion for economic growth, said: “Reform’s fantasy economics would lead to a financial crisis whilst devastating public services. First they announced unfunded spending plans that would crash the economy like Liz Truss did, now they pledge to bulldoze through the public services people rely on every day.
“The NHS, our defences, police on the street, and the criminal justice system – all would be under threat with Reform.”
