During tonight’s (Thursday, June 5) Sky News, host Jonathan Samuels veered away from the planned broadcast to announce that Zia Yusuf, the Chairman of the political party Reform UK, had stepped down from his position after less than a year in the role.
Samuels directly told viewers: “Zia Yusuf has resigned as Chairman of Reform UK, saying a short time ago in a post on X that working to get the party elected is no longer a good use of his time.”
The broadcaster later interviewed political correspondent Serena Barker Singh on the show and began by telling her: “This news comes just a day after he was very critical of Reform’s newest MP [Sarah Pochin], who won that by-election.”
She replied: “It does. It feels like this party is experiencing chaos after chaos. The latest is that their Chairman has announced they are resigning in a pretty scathing tweet.”
“We don’t know the full circumstances around his departure but it is certainly a shock resignation for a pretty senior frontline politician in the party,” she added. “The irony is, he was brought in to bring some credibility to Reform UK.”
Yusuf’s post read: “11 months ago I became Chairman of Reform. I’ve worked full-time as a volunteer to take the party from 14 to 30%, quadrupled its membership and delivered historic electoral results.
“I no longer believe working to get a Reform government elected is a good use of my time, and hereby resign the office.”
Party leader Nigel Farage then posted on his X account to address Yusuf’s resignation. He stated: “I am genuinely sorry that Zia Yusuf has decided to stand down as Reform UK Chairman. As I said just last week, he was a huge factor in our success on May 1st and is an enormously talented person. Politics can be a highly pressured and difficult game, and Zia has clearly had enough. He is a loss to us and public life.”
His resignation comes after a row in which he described a question to the Prime Minister about banning burkas from Reform MP Sarah Pochin as “dumb”.