'You've Been Muscled Out': Nick Robinson Goads Zia Yusuf For Quitting As Reform Chairman

Zia Yusuf was forced to deny he had been “muscled out” as Reform UK chairman following his dramatic resignation from the role.

He was goaded by BBC journalist Nick Robinson after he returned to the party fold just 48 hours later – but in a more junior role.

Yusuf will now head up Reform’s equivalent of Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which was set up to root out waste in the US government.

On Radio 4′s Today programme this morning, Yusuf said his decision to stand down as chairman was down to tiredness from over-work.

“It’s very difficult to keep going at that pace and that exhaustion led to a poor decision,” Yusuf said.

He also denied he was at odds with Reform MP Sarah Pochin, despite criticising her “dumb” decision to ask Keir Starmer whether he would ban the burqa when that is not her own party’s policy.

Robinson told him: “You’re not the chairman. You’re much, much less influential than you once were. 

“You’ve been muscled out, haven’t you, Mr Yusuf? Aaron Banks, who is a close ally of Nigel Farage, tweeted after you quit that ‘Zia worked very hard but he struggled with people and relationships. The corks will be popping in party HQ’.

“They’ve got you where they wanted you, haven’t they? Not influential, but still making public appearances to give some cover to Nigel Farage.”

But Yusuf said he was now “serving in a role that I think is going to be incredibly important”.

“The reality is that this DOGE project of uncovering wasteful, potentially corrupt practices in local government and potentially beyond, I think is going to be one of the most important missions that this country is going to have to go through, given the state of the public finances,” he said.