Is Zia Yusuf saying Nadhim Zahawi can't stand for Parliament?

Reform’s absurdly self-styled “shadow home secretary” Zia Yusuf extended his usual friendly congratulations as it emerged that Sagal Abdi-Wali, the leader of Camden Council, was the favourite to run as Labour’s candidate in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, which was sparked by Keir Starmer’s resignation from the Commons.

Abdi-Wali came to the UK as a child refugee from Somalia in the early 1990s. She was first elected as a Labour councillor in 2022 and is widely respected in Labour and wider London politics for her stewardship of the local authority.

So inevitably the charmless Yusuf greeted her candidacy with: “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?”

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It’s not actually clear what is happening here, other than one of Reform’s most senior figures apparently suggesting that people not born in the UK should not be allowed to sit in Parliament – something which Rats in a Sack is pretty certain is not the party’s policy.

Perhaps Yusuf should have a word with another senior Reform figure – one who, unlike him, had actually stood for and been elected to Parliament and achieved the second-highest ministerial office?

The briefly-in-office chancellor Nadhim Zahawi defected from the Conservatives to Reform earlier this year, dismissing allegations that Nigel Farage had been a racist in his schooldays by telling a press conference: “If I thought the man sitting next to me had in any way a problem with people of my colour… I wouldn’t be sitting next to him.”

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Zahawi fled to the UK with his family from Iraq when he was nine years old and Saddam Hussein was rising to power, going on to serve three teams as a Conservative councillor in Putney before becoming MP for Stratford-on-Avon. He then rose to become a junior minister, education secretary and eventually, if briefly, chancellor. His remarkable story is laid out in his book, The Boy from Baghdad.

Now it appears that, as far as Yusuf is concerned, his country of birth should bar him from standing for Parliament again. Should make for an interesting conversation at this weekend’s Reform Party Conference!

Meanwhile, someone called Simon Harris on X replied to Yusuf’s post with: “Yes. I understand that if she doesn’t win the seat, she won’t throw a hissy fit and declare herself the Shadow MP for Holborn and St Pancras.”