Former Conservative Chancellor Nadhim Zahawi announced he has defected to Reform, saying the UK ‘really does need Nigel Farage as Prime Minister’.
Zahawi, who spent two months in charge of the nation’s finances following the resignation of Rishi Sunak in 2022, is the highest-profile Tory yet to join the party.
He told a press conference: ‘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.’
The news will come as another blow to Kemi Badenoch, following a string of defections from the Conservatives to Farage’s right-wing challengers.
Reform has spent close to 10 months at the top of the opinion polls following a sharp decline in support for Labour, though the Tories have made up some ground since the start of December.
Farage suggested Zahawi’s defection demonstrated his party was not a ‘one-man band’.
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Who is Nadhim Zahawi?
Before going into politics, Nadhim Zahawi was best known as the co-founder of influential polling company YouGov.
He was born in Baghdad to a prominent business family, and fled from Iraq with themat the age of 11 as Saddam Hussein rose to power.
Zahawi was elected as MP for Stratford-on-Avon at the 2010 election, and first entered government as a minister in the Department for Education in 2018.
He was the government lead in the deployment of the Covid vaccine from November 2020 to September 2021, when he continued his rise through the ranks by becoming Education Secretary.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson made him chancellor in July 2022 following the resignation of Rishi Sunak, but he only stayed in the job for two months as new PM Liz Truss replaced him with Kwasi Kwarteng in September.
It later emerged he had been under investigation by HMRC during his term as chancellor, a revelation that led him to be sacked as Conservative Party chairman by Sunak.
In May 2024, he announced he would be stepping down as an MP at the next election.
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