NIGEL Farage will surrender his controlling stake of Reform and hand its members the power oust him – but not before a shot at No10 by 2030.
As the right-wing start-up party prepares for their conference tomorrow, Chairman Zia Yusuf has revealed the Brexit boss will give up his 40 per cent stake in the venture.
Reform had been run as a company but will now be incorporated as a proper political party – with founder Mr Farage unable to anoint a chosen successor.
Speaking on our Never Mind the Ballots show, Yusuf said: “Nigel is going to sign away his majority shareholding in the party. The party will essentially be a proper, democratised political party governed by its constitution.”
And while he insisted “Nigel has universal support amongst our members” there would be a “mechanism” for them to boot him out if they choose.
“The whole point of having a membership is giving them a say, not only at a local level, where they’ll be able to select candidates, select a chair, select a treasurer, secretary, campaign manager, but also at a national level,” he added.
While he insisted his aim was to make Nigel Farage the PM by 2030, Yusuf added: “We have to have a legacy for Nigel ultimately.
“And, you know, building a political party… part of that is making sure that it has succession plans.
“The constitution that we’re presenting to members will have a process by which that can be taken care of.”
The multi-millionare businessman donor has been appointed by Farage to professionalise Reform, starting with setting up hundreds of branches and properly vetting candidates.
Asked about his own ambitions, Mr Yusuf said: “My plans are to build the most formidable campaign winning machine in this country and ensure Nigel Farage is elected Prime Minister.
“And I really believe that Nigel Farage could be elected by Prime Minister.”
He added: We now have achieved phase one. We’ve got five brilliant members of Parliament in the House of Commons. We won 4.1 million votes, and now we have a platform to reconstitute the centre right of politics in this country.”
He also hit out at the “negligible” vetting process ahead of July’s election that saw racist Reform candidates exposed during the campaign to huge embarrassment to the party.
“We had issues with some candidates,” he said. “It was a very small number, but they did exist and we don’t make excuses.”
“We won 4.1 million votes. We’re now polling at 18% nationally, as you know. So you’re talking about five, 5.5 million people across the country who support reform.
“The realities in such a large size of a population, as you know, you’re always going to have a tiny proportion of those people who don’t represent us.”
“So again, we don’t make excuses, we’ve got to have an outstanding vetting process, which we’re building in-house. And we think it’ll be the best.”
Watch Never Mind The Ballots
WATCH our agenda-setting Never Mind The Ballots show every week on YouTube.
Simply click here to get all the latest episodes with our host Harry Cole.
