IS ZIA YUSUF DECEIVING REFORM VOTERS?

His own party recruits, elects and defends foreign-born candidates. So what did Zia Yusuf want 650,000 people to “understand” about Sagal Abdi-Wali?

Yusef asked 650,000 people whether they understood "what's happening". He did not tell them that Reform recruits, elects and defends foreign-born candidates of its own.

Zia Yusuf is Reform UK's Home Affairs spokesman. He is the man Reform has chosen to speak for it on who enters Britain and who belongs here. On Wednesday evening he posted this:

"The front runner being foisted on the people of Holborn by Labour to replace the former Prime Minister Keir Starmer in our Parliament was born in Somalia. Do you understand what's happening?"

No, Zia, I don't. Tell me.

The same evening he also shared the newspaper story itself, headline and all, with the photograph of her in a pink hijab standing next to Starmer. That got 65,000 views. The post with nothing in it but her birthplace and a question got 650,000.

Not one of those 650,000 readers was told what she is supposed to have done. He gave them her birthplace and a hint. Does he not have the courage to write the next sentence? Perhaps he is wanting his followers to write it for him.

Sagal Abdi-Wali was born in Somalia. She came to London as a small child fleeing civil war and famine. She was raised in Camden, educated in Camden, worked for Camden council, was elected to it in 2022 and now runs it. She is a British citizen, and she is the woman in the photograph he wants his readers to suspect.

Nobody handed her to anyone. The voters of her ward elected her in 2022. Camden's Labour councillors made her their leader in May. If she wants Starmer's seat she has to win a selection first.

Now look at Nadhim Zahawi. He was born in Baghdad. In January Nigel Farage announced him at a press conference and told Reform's members he was theirs. Nobody voted. Nobody was asked. A foreign-born man was handed to Reform by its leader and Yusuf said nothing. A foreign-born woman was chosen by voters and by councillors and may yet be chosen by members, and Yusuf asks whether you understand what is happening. The person actually handed to a party was the man Farage unveiled at a press conference.

The only thing Yusef's post gives anyone to hold against her is where she was born. So the accusation he wants made is that a British citizen should not sit in Parliament because she was born abroad. If that is what he thinks, he should have the balls to say it, and then he should have the balls to say it to his own side. Because his own side has already written down a rule, and it is not that one.

HIS PARTY WROTE DOWN ONE RULE. YUSUF HID ANOTHER INSIDE A QUESTION.

On 28 August Reform published its Election Integrity Bill. Danny Kruger tabled amendments to end the Commonwealth franchise and restrict the vote to British and Irish citizens, because elections are being fought on ethnic and sectarian grounds and the vote should belong to members of the British nation.

That is right, and it is the only sensible thing Reform has said all summer. A Nigerian student on a six-month visa can vote for the British Parliament today and that is a disgrace. But Reform's bill answers who should vote and nothing else. It does not say which British citizens should be allowed to stand. Five days later Yusuf hinted at a new rule for candidates and never stated it.

If Reform believes that foreign-born British citizens should be barred from Parliament, it should publish that rule and defend it. Yusuf did neither. He posted her birthplace and left his followers to invent the rule for him.

Neither Farage nor Kruger has said a word, and their silence leaves Reform answerable for its Home Affairs spokesman's post. Three weeks ago Farage gave Yusuf a public ticking off for calling Ben Wallace a traitor. He has had nothing to say about this.

There is a reason he did not write his rule down. If he had, the first people it caught would be sitting on his own benches.

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HE CANNOT WRITE IT DOWN BECAUSE HIS OWN PARTY WOULD FAIL IT

On 12 January Nigel Farage held a press conference in London to announce Zahawi. Zahawi was born in Baghdad. His family fled Saddam Hussein when he was a child and arrived here in the 1970s. He was a child refugee from a war, and he arrived here the same way she did.

In March 2015 Farage said an employer should be allowed to choose a British-born worker over a foreign-born one. Zahawi answered him in public: "I'm not British born Mr Nigel Farage, I'm as British as you are. Your comments are offensive and racist. I would be frightened to live in a country run by you."

Farage wanted birthplace to decide who gets a job. Yusuf wants birthplace to decide who gets a seat in Parliament. It is the same test, and Zahawi's word for it was racist. Eleven years later Farage stood beside him at the press conference, and Zahawi quietly deleted the tweet once it was over.

Then there is Joshua Kim who sits in the Senedd for Reform. He was born in South Korea. Cristiana Emsley sits in the Senedd for Reform. She was born in Romania.

In December Reform's Portsmouth branch picked Addy Mo Asaduzzaman to fight a council seat. He came here from Bangladesh on a student visa, holds indefinite leave to remain and is not a British citizen. When Reform's own supporters complained that a foreign national was standing for them, the branch defended him and stood him anyway.

So Reform recruited a man born in Iraq, elected a man born in Korea and a woman born in Romania, and stood a man who is not a British citizen.

Zia Yusuf was one of the most senior people in the party for all of it and never once asked the public whether they understood what was happening. He found his voice for a Somali woman in a hijab who would stand for Labour. Her birthplace does not separate her from his colleagues, because three of them were born abroad, and her British citizenship puts her ahead of Reform's Portsmouth candidate, who did not hold it. The only thing that separates her from them is the party she would stand for.

He told 650,000 readers that his party believes something his party's own candidates prove it does not believe. That is deceit is it not?

HE CANNOT SAY WHERE IT STOPS

There are only four places Yusuf's test can stop, and every one of them costs him.

If it stops at citizenship, the Somalian refugee passes.
If it stops at birthplace, it catches Zahawi, Kim and Emsley.
If it reaches the parents, it catches both himself and Cunningham.
If it goes further than that, it is Restore Britain's test and Yusef is standing in Rupert Lowe's party.

Zia Yusuf was born in Bellshill. His parents were born in Sri Lanka. Laila Cunningham, Reform's candidate for Mayor of London, was born in Paddington. Her parents were born in Egypt. The moment the test reaches behind the candidate to the parents, Reform's Home Affairs spokesman and its London mayoral candidate are both caught by it.

Restore Britain would let her stand. For all Rupert Lowe's talk, that a British passport does not make you British and that Restore will not stand Bangladeshi candidates, when Restore wrote its rule down the rule bars foreign nationals and nothing more.

Asaduzzaman is a foreign national and it caught him. Abdi-Wali is a British citizen and it does not catch her. Reform's written rule is about who votes and does not touch her either.

So the only person in British politics who has suggested Sagal Abdi-Wali should not sit in Parliament is Zia Yusuf. Lowe's rhetoric runs past citizenship but his policy stops at it. Yusuf has gone past the line Restore's own policy stops at, to get at a Labour candidate, and he could only do it by never writing a line of his own. Reform's Home Affairs spokesman is now to the right of Restore Britain on who may sit in Parliament, and the voters he was trying to keep from Lowe should understand what that means.

HE IS DOING THE EXACT THING HIS PARTY CLAIMS TO BE AGAINST

Kruger's bill exists because elections are being fought on ethnic and sectarian lines. In the same week the national press introduced Labour's front-runner as a Somali refugee before it mentioned that she runs a London borough. Green activists in a public WhatsApp group were asking British Palestinians to stand because a Palestinian beating Labour in Starmer's old seat "would be epic." And Reform's Home Affairs spokesman added her birthplace.

Nobody has been selected. The identities arrived before the candidates and before their policies.

I have watched this poison Oldham for years. The parties stopped asking people what they believed and started counting what a surname, a mosque or a birthplace would deliver on the night. I have spent years exposing the Pakistani cartels in Oldham for choosing their candidates by clan and the Bangladeshis by village and then delivering the bloc to Labour.

On Wednesday Zia Yusuf judged a candidate by her birthplace and her people. That is how the cartels do it. The biraderi would recognise every bit of it.

Some Green activists want a Palestinian candidate because of Gaza. Yusuf wants his followers looking at a Somali birthplace and a hijab. It is the same trade Labour runs in Oldham. He has picked a different tribe to point at, and he did it five days after his own party published a bill against it.

Reform wrote down who should vote and published it. Yusuf hinted at who should stand and hid it inside a question.

The target was Reform voters drifting towards Rupert Lowe. Restore has been recruiting from Reform since February, and Yusuf wanted those members to believe Reform shares Restore's view without ever committing his party to it. He used a Somali woman in a hijab to send it, and the question mark let him deny he had sent anything. He knew Reform could not say a word against her if she wore a turquoise rosette, because Reform has already welcomed foreign-born British citizens and selected a candidate who is not a citizen at all.

Three men now have questions to answer.

Yusuf should say whether foreign-born British citizens belong in Parliament, and say it as a statement rather than a question.
Farage should say whether Yusuf's post is Reform's position.
Zahawi should say whether he is still as British as Farage, or whether that principle disappeared with his deleted tweet.

None of them will answer, because answering means drawing a line and then living with everyone it catches. Yusuf will not draw one because it catches his colleagues. Farage will not draw one because it catches Zahawi. Lowe drew one and then talked past it. That is where British politics is on the question of who belongs here. Four parties, one written rule between them, and it only covers who votes.

I am not attacking Yusuf for wanting a line. I want one too, and I think the rules we have are far too loose. A student on a six-month visa can vote for the British Parliament and Reform is right to stop it.

I am questioning Yusef for pointing at a Somali woman and refusing to say what his line is, because he knows what it would cost him to say it. So I will say mine. Who should vote, who should stand, how far back it goes and why it stops where it does, in full, applied to Labour, to Reform, to Restore and to everyone else, and applied to the people I have spent years fighting in Oldham as hard as to anyone.

Tomorrow.

For eight years I have exposed how politicians, police and public bodies failed working class White girls who were systematically raped by Pakistani grooming gangs. Together, with the support of the people of Oldham, we forced the Government to concede a National Statutory Inquiry after years of resistance.

Now the harder fight begins.

Andy Burnham is no longer the Mayor of Greater Manchester. He is the Prime Minister. That does not place him beyond scrutiny. If anything, it makes scrutiny more important than ever.

As Mayor, Burnham commissioned a series of Assurance Reviews across Greater Manchester, including one in my hometown of Oldham. They were presented as a search for the truth. They were nothing of the sort. They were cover ups of cover ups that allowed those responsible to escape proper accountability.

Don't take my word for it. Even former Greater Manchester Police detective Maggie Oliver has described what happened in Oldham as 'nothing short of a cover up'.

Despite every effort to stop us, we forced a National Inquiry. Now Burnham and others are attempting to rewrite the history of what happened under their watch.

At present, the inquiry has made no commitment to examine Burnham's own role or the decisions taken during his time as Mayor. That must change before the Oldham investigations begin.

The pressure to protect a serving Prime Minister will be immense. The institutions that failed these girls will have every incentive to avoid putting the country's most powerful politician under oath. Much of the media will once again find reasons to look the other way.

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