Zia Yusuf, a self-described ‘British Muslim patriot’, leaves a party accused of fuelling Islamophobia after 11 months.
The Muslim chairman of the United Kingdom’s radical right-wing Reform UK party has quit after denouncing a call from within party ranks to ban the burqa as “dumb”.
“I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time, and hereby resign the office,” Zia Yusuf announced on X on Thursday, hours after hitting out at Reform UK lawmaker Sarah Pochin for asking Prime Minister Keir Starmer whether his government would consider banning the burqa.
Pochin won her seat in a by-election last month that saw the anti-immigration party, some of whose members have been accused of Islamophobia, make significant gains in a political landscape traditionally dominated by the governing Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives.
The new lawmaker had urged Labour’s Starmer during her debut appearance at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday if he would consider the move “in the interests of public safety”, according to the BBC.
“I do think it’s dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn’t do,” Yusuf said on X amid an ensuing flare-up over whether banning the burqa should be party policy.
Yusuf, a former banker and self-described “proud British Muslim patriot”, became Reform UK chairman after last year’s general election, having jumped ship from the Conservative Party.
Reform UK, led by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage, won four parliamentary seats in a breakthrough result last year, going on to gain a fifth parliamentary seat, its first mayoralty and a number of council seats in local elections last month.
It currently leads national opinion polls, ahead of the Labour Party.
Farage said on X that Yusuf was “a huge factor in our success on May 1st and is an enormously talented person”.
Divisions in the party’s upper ranks have been made public before.
In March, Reform referred one of its lawmakers, Rupert Lowe, to police over a number of allegations, including threats of physical violence against Yusuf.
Prosecutors later said they would not bring charges against Lowe, who was suspended by the party.