Shocking: Zahawi’s Peerage Bid Rejected Before Reform Switch

Former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi has become the most senior Conservative figure yet to defect to Reform UK, with senior Tories claiming the move followed his unsuccessful attempt to secure a peerage.

Zahawi, a former MP and cabinet minister, was unveiled as Reform UK’s latest recruit by party leader Nigel Farage at a press conference on Monday. He is one of around 20 former Conservative MPs who have now joined the party.

However, Conservative chairman Kevin Hollinrake said Zahawi’s defection came only after he had made repeated approaches to Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch seeking nomination to the House of Lords, requests which were turned down.

Zahawi calls Britain “broken”

In a pre recorded video shown before he appeared on stage, Zahawi said the UK was facing a “dark and dangerous” moment and claimed the country needed what he described as a “glorious revolution”.

“Nothing works,” he said. “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.”

He said he believed Reform UK was the only political force capable of delivering change, adding: “The team that will deliver for this nation will be the team that Nigel will put together.”

During the press conference, Zahawi criticised Badenoch, saying she carried the “baggage of a defunct brand”. Farage went further, predicting that elections in Scotland, Wales and English councils later this year would mark the moment the Conservatives “cease to be a national party”.

Conservatives point to rejected peerage request

Hollinrake suggested Zahawi’s decision to defect was linked to personal ambition rather than principle. He said Zahawi had made several attempts in recent weeks to press his case for a peerage through figures close to the Conservative leader.

“It seems strange to change his perspective only a few weeks down the road from those conversations taking place,” he told the BBC.

He added that the party had serious reservations about elevating Zahawi to the House of Lords, citing his past tax affairs and his dismissal from a senior party role.

“Our position was very clear,” Hollinrake said. “We want to make sure the people we elevate to the House of Lords are the right people, who make the right contribution and have the right back story.”

A source close to Zahawi rejected the claim, saying he had not sought a peerage and had instead been contacted by Badenoch for advice on saving the party. The source said Zahawi decided to join Reform because he believed it was “the only party that can save Britain”.

Earlier, a Conservative spokesman described Reform UK as “fast becoming the party of has been politicians looking for their next gravy train”.

Reform denies becoming “Conservatives 2.0”

Farage dismissed suggestions that Reform UK was simply absorbing disaffected Conservatives. He said several current Tory MPs had approached his party about joining, but not all had been accepted.

He said Zahawi brought both conviction and belief in Reform’s mission.

Zahawi served as chancellor for two months at the end of Boris Johnson’s premiership and held multiple cabinet roles between 2018 and 2023, including education secretary, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and Conservative Party chairman. He was sacked from that final role by Rishi Sunak in January 2023 after an ethics inquiry found he had breached ministerial rules by failing to fully disclose an HMRC investigation into his tax affairs.

Asked about his dismissal, Zahawi said he accepted he had made mistakes in how he handled declarations but argued this should not bar him from public service.

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“I absolutely think politicians should be held to a higher level of accountability,” he said. “But I shouldn’t be precluded from doing the right thing by my country.”

Opposition criticism and political background

Labour Party chair Anna Turley said Zahawi was “a discredited and disgraced politician” and accused him of hypocrisy for joining a party led by someone he had previously criticised.

“This shameless scurry of yet another failed Tory over to Reform tells people everything they need to know about both of them,” she said.

Liberal Democrat MP Manuela Perteghella, who represents Zahawi’s former constituency of Stratford on Avon, described Reform UK as “a retirement home for disgraced former Conservative ministers”.

Zahawi unsuccessfully stood to succeed Boris Johnson as Conservative leader in 2022, securing the backing of just 25 MPs before being eliminated in the first round. He previously served as vaccines minister during the pandemic, overseeing the rollout of the Covid 19 vaccination programme.

Born in Iraq in 1967, Zahawi fled the country with his family as a child and grew up in the UK. Asked whether allegations of racism previously made against Farage concerned him, Zahawi said he would not be sitting alongside the Reform leader if he believed such claims were true.

“If I thought the man sitting next to me had any problem with people of my colour,” he said, “I wouldn’t be sitting next to him.”