Speaking at the press conference, Zahawi said problems with free speech “on X or even just down the pub” was one of the reasons he was joining Reform.<\/p>\n
He cited an “over-powerful” civil service and quangos that he said had been started under Labour PM Tony Blair and continued under his own Conservative government, adding that he shared some of the blame for “constitutional vandalism” and “our failure to take back control over the entrenched, unelected bureaucracy”.<\/p>\n
He added there had been major failures with mass migration and “bad, virtue-signalling legislation that has made us less competitive and less prosperous”.<\/p>\n
Farage insisted that this latest Tory defection did not mean Reform was becoming the Conservatives 2.0, and said he had fought the party “tooth and nail” over Brexit.<\/p>\n
A Conservative spokesman said Reform was “fast becoming the party of has-been politicians looking for their next gravy train”. <\/p>\n
“Their latest recruit used to say he’d be ‘frightened to live in a country’ run by Nigel Farage, which shows the level of loyalty for sale,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Reform want higher welfare spending and higher taxes. They are a one-man band with no plan for our country. <\/p>\n
“Under Kemi Badenoch the Conservatives are demonstrating we have the plan, the competence and the team to get Britain working again.”<\/p>\n
When the criticism was put to Zahawi, he replied Badenoch had the “baggage of a defunct brand”.<\/p>\n
Farage went on to say that, in the upcoming May elections for Holyrood, the Welsh Senedd, and local elections across England, the Conservatives “will cease to be a national political party”.<\/p>\n
He added there were “plenty” of current Conservative MPs asking about joining Reform and some were not being accepted, but he said Zahawi believed “in what we’re doing” and also has the necessary “conviction”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking at the press conference, Zahawi said problems with free speech “on X or even just down the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366097,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[59,57,58,50,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-366096","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-kingdom","tag-gb","tag-great-britain","tag-greatbritain","tag-news","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366096","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=366096"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366096\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}