Zia Yusuf: Supportive emails and private chats with Nigel Farage – the inside track on his sudden return to Reform UK
A week is normally a long time in politics; in Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party, just 48 hours feels like a lifetime.
It was on Thursday evening at around 5.30pm when Zia Yusuf quit as party chairman, a day after criticising a call by his party’s new MP for Runcorn Sarah Pochin, to ban the burka with a 54-word statement on X.
He said then: “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.”
The timing of the announcement, with voters in the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election still casting their ballots for another four and a half hours, appeared to show a lack of care for the party to which he had devoted his life for the past 11 months.
At the moment he quit, I was standing on a pavement in Hamilton with a few Reform UK campaigners who were telling me of their conviction that history was about to be made for Reform.
Their hoped-for victory never came (Labour won, with the SNP second) but the party’s performance – a creditable 3rd and 7,088 votes, less than 1,500 votes from winning the seat – showed how far the party had come.
The last time Reform had contested the seat, at the 2021 Holyrood elections, Reform UK had come a distant 12th, with just 58 votes.
Yusuf announced he would be returning to the party in a new role
PA
Did this unexpectedly strong performance sway Yusuf’s mind? He did not say when I spoke to him late on Saturday. But it was clear that two days after he resigned, he had had second thoughts and was back in the party.
Yusuf was clearly pleasantly surprised by the welter of good wishes he had received from within the party and most of its MPs (Reform chief whip Lee Anderson’s post on X was the most lukewarm about the outgoing chairman).
Yusuf told me today that he had received “hundreds” of messages from some of the party’s 235,000 members, and it had meant he realised that the bile he often receives on X or Twitter was not representative of feelings towards him.
Several private conversations with Farage himself were also enough for him to decide to change his mind. He recognised, he told me, that Reform UK was like a start-up and it was natural that roles change as the party grows.
LATEST DEVELOPMENTS:
Zia Yusuf announced his resignation on ThursdayXHe had taken on too much, he said, working with barely a day off for the past 11 months to help Farage get the party up and running, notably with a new structure, rather than the previous company-based one.
So Yusuf has performed a partial about-turn. He is not returning as chairman, but in a new role to focus on policy formation, fundraising and the ‘Doge’ project to cut waste in the party’s 10 councils.
Yusuf was clear too that, contrary to his own X post after Pochin’s question at Prime Minister’s Questions on banning the burka, he would “probably” vote to ban the burka, along with some other face coverings, if he became an MP.
And he added that he fully backs Pochin, saying she was an “incredible candidate” at the Runcorn by-election.
Nigel Farage appeared on GB News shortly after Yusuf announced his resignation on ThursdayGB NewsFarage is now focusing on carving up the work which Yusuf was doing into more manageable chunks for other staff and supporters.
He will now appoint a new party chairman on Tuesday or Wednesday next week, with a deputy following soon after.
The new chairman will focus on travelling the UK to meet and support the party’s 400-plus new branches.
The new deputy chairman to ensure that new candidates are properly vetted.
Elsewhere, Aaron Lobo – Farage’s former producer at GB News on his show – is now operations director.
A Treasury official to pay the party’s overheads is also being appointed.
Farage said Yusuf made his decision because of a “ludicrous workload”.
Farage added: “He made an error of judgement. It is allowed! I saw what he did and I thought it doesn’t quite add up.”
For now, Yusuf is planning on a few days’ holiday before he gets back to supporting Reform UK.
Farage generously told me that he will always be grateful for Yusuf’s hard work since he first signed up to support Reform when it was a fraction of its size last year; nothing that happens in the future will be as important as the past 11 months, Farage said.