Rather like Andy Burnham, you can imagine a younger version of Zia Yusuf being sent into Love Island in the third week – when things are getting a bit comfy between the youthful love-seekers – as a ‘bombshell’ to freshen things up a bit (probably the only thing they have in common). Looking like a Disney prince – the modern, inclusive kind, not the boring old blond-haired blue-eyed type – you can see the girls getting all a-flutter over this dashing self-made swell who suddenly makes the humdrum Tylers and Jordans look a bit too boy-next-door.

All the ladies would be hoping to be picked for the romantic dinner, but as the also-rans peep over the parapet, their envy of the chosen girl starts to wane. Isn’t the dark-eyed charmer a little…boastful? Loves the sound of his own voice, to the extent of talking over his date? Seems insufficiently appreciative of the feast-for-two? By the time she returns for a squealing girly debriefing, Zia’s pick is a little disenchanted. ‘He’s my type on paper…but if you’ve been to Tenerife, he’s been to Elevenerife!’ And so the dreaded ‘ick’ spreads among the villa’s female population.

William Atkinson recently put it another way in these pages:

There is something sulphurous about Zia Yusuf. The deep-set, unblinking eyes; the ardent belief in his own mission; the position as a Rasputin at the court of Tsar Nigel Farage; a fervid, prophetic interloper…reader, he terrifies me.

There is something sulphurous about Zia Yusuf. The deep-set, unblinking eyes; the ardent belief in his own mission; the position as a Rasputin at the court of Tsar Nigel Farage; a fervid, prophetic interloper…reader, he terrifies me.

I also see Zia as ‘Zorro’, hero of many a cinema matinee. You can imagine him in tight trousers and a big hat, masked up, waving his rapier around before using it to carve the initial ‘Z’ on vanquished foes. But however one regards him, in his pomposity and posturing, there can be little doubt that Zia Yusuf is now the most preposterous personality in British politics – and therefore to be welcomed, after the profound dreariness of the world’s least amusing double-act, Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer.

Yusuf’s haughtiness is off........

© The Spectator