Reform UK does like one kind of immigrant

Reform UK welcome Nadim Zahawi with open arms

The former Chancellor of the Exchequer and chairman of the Tory party Nadim Zahawi had defected to Reform UK, insisting that the UK is "sick" and that the country has "reached a dark and dangerous chapter".

It’s quite surprising to see the extreme-right party that has driven the rise of naked xenophobia in British politics welcoming the son of Iraqi economic migrants with open arms, but it’s actually fairly easy to understand this marriage of convenience, when considered through the lens of class analysis, rather than race.

Zahawi came to the UK as a child when his wealthy parents fled Saddam Hussain’s Iraq, but he was soon bought entry tickets to the British upper classes via expensive London private schools.

After a failed business venture that destroyed around a hundred jobs and left creditors out of pocket to the tune of £millions, Zahawi resurfaced as a founder of the polling company YouGov (more on that later).

In 2010 the Tory party handed him the ultra-safe Tory seat of Stratford-on-Avon, welcoming him into David Cameron’s austerity government, which used the aftermath of the financial sector insolvency crisis as an excuse to load austerity punishment on the poor and ordinary, whilst simultaneously lavishing tax breaks, handouts, privatisation giveaways, and lucrative outsourcing contracts on corporations and the mega-rich.

Despite a parliamentary expenses scandal where he was caught red handed pilfering public cash to pay for his horses’ heating in their stables, Zahawi thrived in the callous, elitist, austerity-obsessed ranks of the Tory party.

He served as a Covid minister during the Tory orgy of corruption over untendered Covid contracts that diverted literally £billions in public cash into the pockets of Tory-connected spivs, many with absolutely zero experience in supplying medical equipment.

Under Boris Johnson he rose to become Chancellor of the Exchequer, but that’s where it all started going wrong. Journalists finally started looking into his business past and found that his lucrative stake in YouGov had been transferred to a shady Gibraltar-based offshore trust operated by his parents.

Zahawi clung on to his seat at the Tory top table after Boris Johnson’s departure by becoming Tory Party chairman, but he was finally forced to resign after an ethics inquiry found that he had failed to disclose HMRC’s investigation into his tax affairs.

Zahawi had initially tried using lawfare threats to shut down investigations into his tax scandal, but he eventually caved and paid HMRC the £5 million in tax that had been dodged, insisting that the elaborate scheme was some kind of "mistake" rather than deliberate tax evasion.

There are obvious comparisons between the 14 years of brutal Tory abuse of disabled people, carers, and jobseekers, who were subjected to savage cuts and draconian repayment schemes and devastating sanctions over minor errors, while Zahawi was allowed to get away with an elaborate £5 million "tax mistake" because of his position within the heart of the establishment class.

Earn a few quid more than the paltry carers’ allowance threshold, and ordinary folk end up facing brutal repayment conditions, make a mistake on a form, and jobseekers face months of destitution via sanctions, yet Zahawi fails to pay £5 million in tax, and gets away with no consequences by saying ‘oops, it was just a mistake’.

After Zahawi’s defection to Reform, Tory party sources have claimed that he jumped ship just weeks after the party turned him down for the lifetime membership of the unelected House of Lords that he’d been seeking, after losing his Commons seat to the Lib-Dems in the 2024 rout of the Tories.

It’s hard to say whether Zahawi’s defection was motivated by anger at the Tories for denying him the place at the House of Lords trough he felt entitled to, or by political opportunism with Reform leading the polls, or a bit of both.

Reform’s reasoning for accepting a scandal-tainted, Tory austerity wrecker like Zahawi into the fold is less clearcut.

It looks an awful lot like a signal to the the mega-rich that Reform intends to be a soft touch on the kind of mega-rich parasites who hide their financial gains in dodgy offshore trusts.

They must consider this signal to be so worthwhile that they’ll risk the racist wrath of the extreme-right rump that makes up the core of their support, and the disappointment of those who somehow believe the absurd fantasy of Reform UK as an anti-establishment insurgency, rather than a new home for failed Tories.

The message clearly isn’t aimed at their supporters, it’s aimed at the mega-rich, media moguls, and the City of London. ‘Look, we’ve got a former Tory chancellor onboard now, so we’re going to run the country with the same greed, corruption, and Tory class war politics’.

Zahawi is far from the only child of refugees or economic migrants to embrace this right-wing politics of naked corruption; rampant dishonesty; austerity for poor and ordinary Brits alongside handouts for the mega-rich; with great big dollops of “Hostile Environment" and "Windrush" flavoured anti-immigrant hate on top.

Former Home Secretaries Priti Patel and Suella Braverman spring to mind as two of the most vitriolic anti-immigrant rabble rousers from the arse end of the 2010-2024 Tory regime, as well as Rishi Sunak, who got caught pretending to be full-time resident of the United States while serving as Zahawi’s predecessor as the UK’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, and still somehow rose even further to become Prime Minister!

The UK establishment order is obviously more than willing to allow people of immigrant backgrounds to rise to the top, as long as they play along with all the greed, corruption, dishonesty, class warfare against ordinary Brits, and anti-immigrant rabble rousing.

Class warfare clearly trumps outright racism in the ranks of the elitist establishment order.

That’s not to say they don’t use racism to further their own agenda, they absolutely do.

It’s just that it’s people like refugees, Windrush Brits, and migrant workers who get thrown into their racism meat-grinder, not wealthy establishment insiders like Zahawi, Sunak, Patel, and Braverman.

These people are more than welcome in whatever political vehicle is the flavour of the day for the right, as long as they’re willing to join in the class warfare against poor and ordinary Brits, and to play along with the xenophobic hate-mongering against immigrants from lower socioeconomic classes than their own.

In a way Zahawi is right though. The UK is "sick". It’s suffering the sickness of national economic decline, and the single biggest factor in why the country feels like it’s falling apart at the seams these days is the 14 years of Tory austerity ruination that Zahawi and his ilk so gleefully enforced.

He’s right that the UK has "reached a dark and dangerous chapter" too, with the extreme-right leading the polls, and looking to hand scandal-ridden Tory austerity wreckers like Zahawi a free ticket back into government.