As well as his two months as chancellor at the end of Boris Johnson’s time as prime minister, Zahawi was education secretary, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and chairman of the Conservative Party.
He was sacked from that last position by Rishi Sunak in January 2023 after the prime minister’s independent ethics adviser found that he had broken ministerial rules by failing to disclose that his tax affairs were under investigation by HMRC.
Asked by the BBC about being sacked over his tax affairs, Zahawi said: “The mistake I made was not to be specific about my declarations to the Cabinet Office.
“I absolutely think that politicians should be held to a higher level of accountability but I shouldn’t be precluded from doing the right thing by my country.”
The Labour Party chair, MP Anna Turley, said Zahawi was “a discredited and disgraced politician” who had previously “repeatedly lambasted his new boss over his divisive and extreme rhetoric”.
“This shameless scurry of yet another failed Tory over to Reform will tell people everything they need to know about both of them,” she said.
And the Liberal Democrat MP in his old constituency of Stratford-on-Avon, Manuela Perteghella, said: “Reform is becoming a retirement home for disgraced former Conservative ministers.”
Zahawi was a candidate to succeed Johnson as prime minister in 2022 but only attracted the support of 25 of his colleagues and was eliminated in the first round of the leadership contest which Liz Truss won.
Zahawi was education secretary from September 2021 to July 2022, and his short stint as chancellor of the exchequer came between July and September 2022.
In November 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, he was appointed vaccines minister and oversaw the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine programme for nearly a year.
Born in Iraq in 1967, he could have been sent to fight in the 1980s Iran-Iraq War but instead he and his parents fled Iraq and he grew up in the UK.
Questioned on whether he had concerns about allegations of racism made against his new party leader by more than 30 school peers, claims denied by Farage, Zahawi responded: “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.”