[davidjay]

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[Andy McDandy]

Might take a moment to regenerate the article, but here's the text:

Big Beast or just another has-been looking for one more merry-go-round ride on the gravy train? You pays your money and takes your choice.

Whatever you think of Nadhim Zahawi’s defection from the Tories to Reform, it’s certainly the most significant yet.

While I’ve always considered the label ‘Big Beast’ laughable, a self-aggrandising Westminster Bubble fantasy, there’s no disputing the fact that Zahawi is – or, at least has been, if you’ll pardon the expression – a serious political figure.

He’s a former Conservative Party chairman, was a contender for the leadership, Education Secretary and was even Chancellor of the Exchequer for about five minutes.

His finest hour came as vaccines minister under Boris when Britain became the first country in the world to come up with a breakthrough Covid jab.

He knows his way around the corridors of power and, more importantly, knows how to circumvent the entrenched Civil Service Blob.

Zahawi has also built hugely successful businesses, including the opinion polling firm YouGov and a property portfolio said to be worth £100 million.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage joins Nadhim Zahawi today at a press conference in London

Zahawi’s defection makes Farage’s front-bench start to look like a government in waiting, writes Richard Littlejohn

So the gravy train jibes won’t stick. He’s not short of a shilling, or in need of a modest ministerial salary.

It’s also alleged that he’s walked out on the Tories because they wouldn’t give him a peerage. Yet Starmer has refused to let Reform nominate anyone to the House of Lords, so that’s a non-runner, too.

The major blot on Zahawi’s landscape is that his time in No 11 Downing Street was cut short when his tax affairs caused him to fall foul of HMRC and he had to pay a £5 million penalty as well as being found to be in breach of the ministerial code.

But it will have provided him with some insight into the workings of the Treasury and the Whitehall bureaucracy.

And given the well-publicised avoidance antics of Angry Ginge Rayner and ‘Lord’ Mandelson, Labour can hardly smear Zahawi for underpaying tax.

What, then, does he bring to the Reform Party?

Experience, obviously. Zahawi’s defection makes Farage’s front-bench start to look like a proper government in waiting.

Admittedly he’s no longer an MP, even though it’s rumoured he might fight a nailed-on seat at the next general election, perhaps in the Midlands or the Red Wall.

Mr Zahawi at a hustings event in Birmingham in 2022 supporting Liz Truss

Mr Zahawi has previously been Tory chairman, education secretary and Chancellor

He’s also a standing rebuke to the far-Left lunatics who routinely throw student-union slurs of ‘racism’ at Reform.

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 classoom in the UK unable to speak a word of English.

And he joins second-generation immigrants Zia Yusuf, business-savvy policy chief, and combative London mayoral candidate Laila Cunningham as the diverse public faces of Reform.

No one can doubt his love for our country, nor his fears for the future unless there is a drastic change of direction. During his failed Tory leadership bid he spoke movingly of how after his family were given sanctuary here he was living the ‘British dream’.

At yesterday’s press conference in London, Zahawi said Britain was drinking in the Last Chance Saloon, and under threat from radical Islamists.

‘Nothing works, there is no growth, there is crime on our streets and there is an avalanche of illegal migration that anywhere else in the world would be a national emergency.

‘We can all see that our beautiful, ancient, kind, magical island story has reached a dark and dangerous chapter.

‘Things might feel like they are ticking along just fine within a few square miles of where we stand today. But in so much of the rest of the country, the sickness is no surprise to anyone.

‘To anyone trying to get a doctor’s appointment, to anyone who wants to express an opinion, whether on X or even just down the pub, to anyone who wants their children to be taught facts, not harmful fictions at school, to anyone just trying to earn a living and not be crushed into the dirt by ever-growing taxes.

‘Even if you don’t yet realise that Britain needs Reform, you know in your heart of hearts that our wonderful country is sick.’

So it’s a big transfer-window signing for Farage. But it’s also a major blow to Kemi Badenoch just as she was beginning to climb out of the relegation zone, especially coming from someone who once said he had ‘been a Conservative all my life and will die a Conservative’.

And yet. As somebody who wants Reform to flourish, and would welcome my old mate Nigel as our next prime minister, there’s a grave danger that the party is beginning to look like the Conservatives in Exile.

Zahawi’s defection takes the number of former prominent Tories who have crossed the Rubicon to Reform to 25.

They range from sitting MP Danny Kruger, a respected political thinker, to wild cards such as Strictly Come Dancing’s Ann Widdecombe.

Farage says that Reform has turned down several applications from Tories. I believe him. And he has been successful in attracting serious players from finance and beyond, busy behind the scenes raising money and putting a proper party structure in place.

But he does urgently need some more working-class, former Labour politicians like Lee Anderson, especially with the Red Wall up for grabs and Surkeir unravelling Brexit almost daily.

Reform has hoovered up anti-EU former Tories, but that pool has probably run dry by now. Lib Dem voters are a lost cause, away with the fairies most of them, like the Greens.

Yes, Zahawi is a great scalp. But Farage knows that if he is to form the next government he needs to capture millions of Red Wall voters who voted Leave and are utterly disenchanted with Surkeir’s far-Left, Net Zero-obsessed, EU-loving metropolitan Labour Party.

Reform is on a roll. Farage wants to destroy the Tories and the defection of the former party chairman is another nail in the Conservative coffin. But to win power next time he’s going to need a much bigger boat.

Had to laugh at the story about a 58-year-old man who appeared at Durham Crown Court charged with outraging public decency after being arrested out walking in the woods without any trousers, socks or underpants.

Tyrone Ward’s defence was that as he wasn’t wearing any shoes, either, he was ‘barefooting’. My amusement was partly because one of my favourite soul records from the days I was a teenage DJ was Barefootin’ by Robert Parker. It was a staple of my old TV show houseband’s set, too.

(I was also intrigued as to how Gary could illustrate this story in the best paaaasible taste!) It reminded me of the wonderful scene from Only Fools in which Del Boy visited his female GP and was told to undress.

As he emerged from the changing room, she said: ‘Mr Trotter, when I asked you to strip to the waist, I meant the top half.’

[Tubby Isaacs]

Ha ha ha ha. Recruiting the Tory Chancellor who got sacked after what looks very like trying to evade getting on for £5m in tax, that's ready for government all right.

Crime on our streets, says Littlejohn, who isn't known to have given the 1979-97 Tory governments all that much heat. Surprised he didn't claim that Sadiq Khan was hiding murders.