Tuesday, January 13, 2026
Another one jumps to the new Tory Party
The Independent reports that the latest defector has been less than discreet in the past as to what he thinks of Nigel Farage and Reform. Everybody is entitled to change their mind, of course.
The paper says that former Tory Chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, previously said he would be “frightened” to live in a country run by the future Clacton MP and yet yesterday he insisted that Britain “really does need Nigel Farage as prime minister”:
But within minutes, contradictory statements that Mr Zahawi had made on social media about Mr Farage in previous years emerged.
Responding to Mr Farage's 2015 call to scrap much of the UK’s racial discrimination in the workplace legislation, Mr Zahawi wrote on social media: “I’m not British Born Mr @Nigel_Farage I am as British as u r. Yr comments r offensive&racist. I wld b frightened 2live in country run by U.”
“It looks like Farage was right when he said Nadhim Zahawi is ‘just about climbing that greasy pole’,” a Tory source told The Independent.
“Haunted by the spectre of his own irrelevance, Zahawi has jumped on the gravy train. But his sudden, dramatic change of heart won’t be enough to revive his failing political career.”
The 2015 post is one of several statements Mr Zahawi has previously made about the Reform UK leader.
Pointing out his record of running for political office multiple times, he labelled Mr Farage as “establishment as they come” in 2014.
He wrote in Conservative Home a year later: “I was born in Baghdad but am deeply proud to call myself British. My parents chose to make Britain their home because this was a place where belonging was about what you put in, rather than where you came from.
“What’s frightening is that in Farage’s Britain people like me could be lawfully discriminated against and British businesses would be encouraged to bin our CVs.”
Asked in 2014 about his political allegiances, he wrote on X (then Twitter): “Been a Conservative all my life and will die a Conservative.”
Meanwhile, another article in the Independent claims that Zahawi defected after apparently unsuccessfully “begging” Kemi Badenoch to be nominated for a peerage.
This has, of course, raised question marks about the motivations of the man who was sacked as a minister for breaching the ministerial code over his tax affairs. The claim has echoes of Nadine Dorries’ defection after her nomination for a peerage by Boris Johnson was blocked during Rishi Sunak’s government.
It seems that Zahawi and Reform deserve each other.
