Politics: rise of the dregs

By Richard North - January 13, 2026

It will be interesting to see how the polls react to Nadhim Zahawi’s decision to join Reform UK. My guess is that there will be no discernible shift in the short-term but, over the longer term, I see a steady trickle of support draining away, matched by a steady decline in the poll ratings.

As it is, Reform have been flatlining since the council elections in May, never exceeding 30 percent in the poll of polls and currently standing at 29 percent.

A possible harbinger is the resignation from the party of Ian Cooper, former leader of Staffordshire CC for the Reform Party. He won brief fame last December when he was dumped after making a number of perfectly reasonable assertions, saying that Sadiq Kahn, the London mayor was a “narcissistic Pakistani” and that migrants were “intent on colonising the UK, destroying all that has gone before”.

In a post in 2025, he attacked Lammy, the justice secretary, writing: “No foreign national or first-generation migrant should be allowed to sit in parliament”. He also allegedly abused the British-born lawyer and women’s rights activist Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, calling her “Dr Shaga Bing-Bong” and saying it was “time she F’d off back to Nigeria. She’d feel more at home there”.

One can imagine the blue-haired harridans squealing in anguish, but the truth of the matter is that Cooper was articulating views that are probably held by the vast majority of Reform UK members, driven by their ongoing concerns about the devastating effects of mass migration on this country.

It was no coincidence that a man who had been driven out of office by his own party for saying that “No foreign national or first-generation migrant should be allowed to sit in parliament”, should have resigned from the Party on the same day that Farage welcomed Iraq-born Nadhim Zahawi, a former Tory politician whose tenure, to say the very least, has been controversial.

I could go on at length about that controversial career, but I am not inclined to rehash the details. I did an amount of work published in three posts in 2023, after he had been sacked as Conservative Party chairman.

The first dealt with his tax affairs, the second on his highly dubious dealings in Iraqi Kurdistan and the third charted the way Zahawi used his wealth and power to suppress criticisms of his dealings.

As regards his dealing in Kurdish oil, Zahawi continues to attract attention, for good reason in circumstances where only the very brave or foolhardy would venture the obvious conclusions about this man.

This, though, is a man who Farage “warmly welcomes” to Reform UK, calling him: “A successful businessman who reached the top of the tree in politics and knows how to get stuff done”.

It was perhaps indicative that there were 3.7K responses to Farage’s post on X. I skimmed a few hundred of them and read only one which approved of Zahawi joining the party, and I think that one was ironic.

On X, Cooper avoided comment on Zahawi but offered his reflections on the end of a political journey, to which I added my own commentary, pointing to where I think the party is going when it takes on recruits like Zahawi.

I was not in the least surprised at Cooper’s resignation, I wrote. Through the prolonged journey of Ukip, Brexit Party and now Reform UK, I have seen dozens of Ian Coopers – good, solid men determined to make a difference – join in good faith and hope one of Farage’s enterprises, only then to suffer the same morale-sapping realisation that Farage is a political opportunist leading his followers down a cul-de-sac.

It is highly significant, I ventured, that, of the many who helped Farage to make his first breakthrough to become an MEP in 1999, none of them are still with him. Many of them were the Ian Coopers of the day who have seen through the Farage façade and have distanced themselves from him.

Even at the height of its popularity under Farage, I recalled, Ukip had more ex-members than members, people who had experienced the frustration of trying to achieve political change in a party with Farage at the helm. I was one of them.

Farage’s great skill, though, is constantly to reinvent himself so that, as he discards one band of supporters, like a snake shedding its skin, he acquires a new band of politically naïve, enthusiastic supporters who are keen to sup the Farage Kool Aid.

Gradually, those like Ian Cooper – who have principles and some sense of honour – find they can no longer tolerate Farage’s political opportunism, and his belief that loyalty is a one-way street – to be given unconditionally to The Great Leader but never reciprocated.

In time, I predicted, we will see a trickle of men like Ian Cooper leave the party and, if Farage continues the way he is doing – which, of course he will – the trickle will become a flood.

The political chameleon will then have to reinvent himself once more but, this time, recruiting a fresh band of supporters will become a little more difficult. Too many people now realise what he’s like and he’s picking up too much political baggage.

Even now, though, I still have my regrets. All of this is a great shame. We all once had high hopes, driven by an enthusiasm which Farage has squandered. He is not the leader who will take us to the promised land, and we are all sadder and wiser for that realisation.

Pete, as is his wont, was less restrained about Zahawi’s recruitment. “I think this latest Reform blunder might end up being a very large hole below the water line”, he wrote.

Farage is used to doing things that will piss off the Reform base without it denting their poll lead and it’s made him complacent. This time, we may again see that it makes no difference to Reform’s standing in the polls, but it could very well mean that come election time, his activist base has completely deserted him.

The mission, ever since the general election, has been to build a ground game to convert all the close seconds in 2024 into wins in 2029, but you simply cannot do that when you treat your base with such abject contempt.

The whole point of Reform is to replace the Tory party and build a viable centre-right alternative, but instead we see Reform serving as a career lifeboat for all the dregs of the Tory party. There’s been some highly questionable decision making recently, but to welcome Nadhim Zahawi of all people is unbelievably, gob-smackingly crass.

Pete continues, saying: “I generally credit Farage with a certain political nous and am able to appreciate that he’s triangulating away from the headbanger right for electability, but this defies any explanation”.

“Whatever political instinct Farage once had”, he adds, “he’s lost it completely. He’s no longer in touch with the base, and he’s clearly just going through the motions. Worse still, there’s no longer anyone around him to put a word in his ear. The whole top team have completely lost the plot”.

A former Tory colleague, Rachel Maclean, then added her own words, referring to “damning statements” from Zahawi’s former Stratford on Avon colleagues (where he was the MP) which tell the full story.

“Nobody wanted him back because no-one liked him and his tax fiddling reputation was seriously damaging”, she says. “As his former constituency neighbour”, she adds, “it was obvious he never worked or even visited his constituency”.

“As ever”, she continues, “this defection is all about him. He realised he had no route back as a Conservative MP or a Peer. Our party under new leadership values hard work, honesty and most of all Conservative values. He doesn’t embody a single one”.

Part of one statement, from Cllr Daren Pemberton, leader of the Conservative group on Stratford District Council, says: “Nadhim Zahawi’s political influence and relevance is long behind him and from here on Reform UK in Stratford District will be personified by Nadhim Zahawi which will make it absolutely clear to local voters what they will get with Reform UK …self, self, self”.

Members of Reform will now be able to bask in the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from the knowledge that all their hard work will have the effect of furthering the political career of one Nadhim Zahawi. They will not be the ones laughing though.