Will pride come before a call for Zia Yusuf?

Might pride come before a fall for Zia Yusuf, Reform’s hubristic head of policy?

Yusuf – the party’s chair until he resigned and then swiftly unresigned earlier this year in a row over banning the burqa – seems increasingly to believe that the next general election is won, culminating in a graceless speech at the Spectator’s annual awards bash this week.

Accepting an award for resignation of the year for his brief dalliance with life outside Reform, Yusuf told the gathering of Westminster’s great and good: “Reform is routinely polling at north of 30%, we’ve got 265,000 members and I think I speak on behalf of Nigel, who’s here tonight, and everyone else at Reform, when I say – and I genuinely and sincerely mean this – we could not have done it without you.

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“I’ve gotta give credit where it’s due, your ability to vaporise your public support in such a short period of time is something to behold. So I encourage you all, please, enjoy the delicious food, enjoy the beautiful wine, this incredible venue and the hospitality of our friends at the Spectator, because soon enough you’ll all lose your seat and you’ll not be invited again.”

Might Yusuf’s David ‘Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government’ Steel tribute act come back to bite him? It came less than a week after tactical voting saw Reform fail to win a Caerphilly by-election that it threw the kitchen sink at, and among numerous stories of chaos at councils the party took charge of in May.

Meanwhile, Yusuf is not uniformly popular among Reform staffers, and history might give him a few pointers as to what happens to people in Nigel Farage’s various parties who begin to gain a profile to rival that of the Dear Leader… might Yusuf himself not be invited next year, especially as Farage’s employer at GB News, Paul Marshall, also owns the Spectator?