The Reform Hokey Cokey: Yusuf’s 24-Hour U-Turn

You put your chairman in, you take your chairman out, in-out-in-out, you shake it all about…

Just when you thought Reform UK couldn’t get any more farcical, Zia Yusuf has performed the political equivalent of the Hokey Cokey. After dramatically quitting as party chairman over the burka ban controversy, he’s now back, 24 hours later, in a shiny new role inspired by Musk’s, Doge.

The Great Flip-Flop

Two days ago, Yusuf declared that getting a Reform government elected was no longer “a good use of my time” and dramatically resigned in disgust over the party’s direction. Yesterday, after receiving “a huge number of lovely and heartfelt messages,” he’s suddenly decided “the mission is too important” and he “cannot let people down.”

What changed in 24 hours? Did he have a Damascus road conversion? Did Nigel Farage offer him a better deal? Or did someone point out how catastrophically bad this looked for a party already struggling with credibility?

Enter the UK DOGE Team

Here’s where it gets truly absurd. Yusuf isn’t returning as chairman; that ship has sailed, but as head of Reform UK’s new “DOGE department.” For those keeping track of American political imports, DOGE stands for “Department of Government Efficiency,” Elon Musk’s meme-coin-inspired creation that promises to cut government waste.

The party’s so-called Doge UK team, which was set up to identify spending cuts in councils the party now controls, was formally launched this week.

So Reform UK, having failed to develop its own coherent policies, is now copying homework from a tech billionaire whose previous political achievements include… being publicly frozen out by Donald Trump after their spectacular falling out.

The Credibility Crisis

Let’s pause to appreciate the sheer absurdity of this sequence:

• Party chairman publicly calls party policy “dumb”

• Chairman dramatically resigns over principle

• Chairman changes mind after 24 hours of nice messages

• Chairman returns to head a UK DOGE team

• Party leader pretends this is all perfectly normal

This isn’t political leadership, it’s a sketch from “The Thick of It.” Malcolm Tucker would have scripted this as a parody of political incompetence.

The Questions Nobody’s Asking

If Yusuf genuinely believed the burka ban question was “dumb” enough to resign over, what’s changed? Has Reform abandoned the policy? Has Yusuf abandoned his principles? Or was the whole resignation just theatrical posturing that backfired spectacularly?

More importantly, what does this say about Reform’s decision-making process? If their chairman can flip-flop on fundamental questions of principle based on a day’s worth of WhatsApp messages, how can voters trust them with actual government decisions?

The Musk Factor

The choice to model Reform’s efficiency drive on Elon Musk’s DOGE is particularly revealing. Musk’s department was supposed to eliminate government waste but became a case study in how not to run anything efficiently. His tenure was marked by public feuds, policy reversals, and an eventual falling out with Trump that put them both on a flight to Epstein’s island.

Farage’s Damage Control

Nigel Farage’s response reveals how desperate Reform has become to look, yes, ‘strong and stable’. Rather than addressing the underlying chaos, he’s enthusiastically embracing the U-turn: “I am delighted that Zia Yusuf will head up Reform UK’s DOGE department.”

Translation: “Please ignore the fact that our party chairman quit in disgust yesterday. Look, we have a shiny new department with a trendy American name!”

The Deeper Problem

This isn’t really about Yusuf’s personal journey from resignation to redemption. It’s about a party that fundamentally doesn’t know what it stands for or how to handle internal disagreement.

When your response to policy disputes is dramatic resignations followed by face-saving U-turns disguised as “new roles,” you’re not running a political Party, you’re running a soap opera.

Yusuf’s Hokey Cokey reveals Reform UK as a party that cannot handle disagreement, cannot maintain consistent messaging, and cannot resist chasing after every shiny American political fad that crosses the Atlantic.

The fact that a party chairman can quit on principle and return 24 hours later in a completely different role suggests that Reform’s principles are about as stable as their personnel decisions.

The Bottom Line

The Reform Hokey Cokey isn’t just embarrassing, it’s revealing. But not in the way you might think. It shows a Party so desperate for stability that it will accept any face-saving formula, no matter how ridiculous.

Yusuf put his resignation in, then took his resignation out. He’s doing the hokey cokey with Reform UK’s credibility, and that’s what it’s all about: the desperate performance of a party that has no idea what it’s actually doing.

But when all is said and done, this probably just means Reform is finally becoming like every other mainstream party. The Tories have been doing policy U-turns for decades, not to mention Liz Truss’s entire economic program lasting less time than a Lettice? Labour promises one thing in manifestos and then turns out to be another Tory Party. The Lib Dems have made coalition flip-flopping an art form.

The only real difference is that Reform hasn’t yet learned to disguise their chaos behind slick PR operations and media management. They’re performing the same political theatre as everyone else, just without the professional costume department.

When your political movement starts resembling a children’s dance routine, perhaps it’s time to question whether any of our parties are ready for the serious business of government. But then again, for modern British politics, perhaps the hokey cokey is the perfect metaphor: lots of energetic movement from all parties that ultimately gets the country nowhere.

Reform UK isn’t broken, it’s just British politics without the makeup.

Paul Knaggs