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Zia Yusuf, who quit as chair of Reform UK on Thursday, is returning to work in a different role at Nigel Farage’s populist party, blaming “exhaustion” for his decision to walk away.
The 38-year old former banker will return after barely 48 hours in self-imposed exile to lead what the party calls its “Doge” team, modelled on US President Donald Trump’s so-called “Department of Government Efficiency”. The unit will seek to root out inefficiencies in 10 councils the party took control of in last month’s local elections.
Farage, Reform leader, said Yusuf would also take on a more public role with fundraising work and more frequent appearances in the media.
“Zia will continue to be an important part of the team we are building to fight and win the next general election,” he said. Yusuf’s formal job title has not yet been decided.
In a post on social media platform X, Yusuf said he still believed that Farage should become Britain’s prime minister.
“After 11 months of working as a volunteer to build a political party from scratch, with barely a single day off, my tweet was a decision born of exhaustion,” he said.
Yusuf, who was appointed Reform chair after giving the fledgling party £200,000, had sought to bring an element of professionalism to its ranks. But his efforts, including sackings, prompted criticism from some colleagues. He resigned on Thursday, saying that working for Reform was not a “good use” of his time.
His resignation came only a few months after a public battle between Farage and Rupert Lowe, briefly one of Reform’s small group of MPs.
Before Yusuf resigned, Sarah Pochin, Reform’s newest MP, had urged prime minister Sir Keir Starmer to ban the burka “in the interests of public safety”. Yusuf, who is Muslim, said it was “dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn’t do”.
However, on Saturday Yusuf told the Sunday Times newspaper he did not resign because he had strong views about the burka, even though he felt “blindsided” by Pochin’s question.
Instead, he said that even though he was “a bit uneasy” about bans in general, he would probably support a burka ban if he was an MP.
Reform is expected to appoint a new chair in the coming days, as well as a deputy.
The party is riding high in the opinion polls, having overtaken both the ruling Labour party and opposition Conservatives. In May it routed both parties in local and mayoral elections, winning 677 council seats.
On Monday Farage will give a speech in Port Talbot, south Wales, ahead of next year’s Senedd elections in which Reform is expected to perform strongly.
Yusuf said on Saturday that he had been “inundated” by messages from party members and supporters encouraging him to reconsider.
“I left my business interests behind, I’ve volunteered full-time, because I love my country and I believe the best way to save it and turn it into a great one is for Nigel to be prime minister,” he said.
“It made me realise that in that moment I was turning my back on that, and I didn’t want to do that. I realised I did have an important role to play. I spoke to Nigel and said I don’t mind saying I made an error. It was a function of exhaustion.”
Ellie Reeves, Labour’s chair, described the personnel changes as a “humiliating hokey-cokey”.
