Is Nadhim Zahawi’s defection to Reform UK a bombshell? No, it’s just naked opportunism |
Defections always pose a messaging dilemma for political parties. Heap too much ordure on the turncoat, and you invite the question of why you were happy to share a tent with them in the first place; praise them too highly, and you exacerbate whatever damage the defection is doing to you.
In the Conservatives’ case, this problem is compounded for journalists by the hyperinflation in key posts. A “former chancellor of the exchequer” sounds like a big deal, and historically it would have been. But in the five years of the last parliament there were no fewer than five chancellors (Margaret Thatcher, across her entire 11-year premiership, had three).
So how do we assess this one? Nadhim Zahawi held several cabinet-level positions under the previous government, but none of them for very long. The most sustained stint was education secretary (September 2021 to July 2022), and the most memorable event of that year was the dramatic scrapping of a schools bill that, it turned out, to the apparent surprise of ministers, would have rolled back much of the Tories’ education reform agenda.
Perhaps that experience explains Zahawi’s emphasis, at Reform UK’s press conference today, on the need “to take back control from the rich powers of the unelected bureaucracy”. But it doesn’t........