The Vicar of Bray Goes to Reform: Nadhim Zahawi, the ‘Glorious Revolution’ and the Great Elite Shuffle

Is there anything quite so wretched as an arsonist complaining about the smell of smoke?

Nadhim Zahawi, the man who sat at the very heart of the Tory government for years, has defected to Reform UK. He claims the country has reached a “dark and dangerous” moment. He calls for a “glorious revolution” to overthrow the very bureaucracy he once commanded.

It is a spectacle that demands not just our attention, but our cold, unblinking scrutiny.

Here we have a former Chancellor of the Exchequer, a man who held the purse strings of the nation, now posing as an insurgent outsider. It is a political transformation so cynical, so devoid of self-awareness, that it clarifies the entire nature of our current democratic malaise.

The Illusion of Rebellion

I am reminded of a conversation I had years ago in a working men’s club in the North East, long before the ‘Red Wall’ fell. An old union rep told me that the most dangerous man in the room isn’t the boss who cuts your wages. It is the foreman who cuts your wages, shakes your hand, and then blames the company ledger he just signed.

Zahawi is that foreman.

He speaks of an “over-powerful” civil service. He decries the “quangos” established under Blair and continued under the Tories.

Let us be rigorously precise about what this means.

Zahawi served as a minister from 2018 to 2023. He was Education Secretary. He was Chairman of the Conservative Party. He was Chancellor. If the civil service was “over-powerful,” it was because ministers like him were too weak, too distracted, or too incompetent to lead.

Zahawi even acknowledged his own role in what he now calls “constitutional vandalism”. That is refreshingly honest, though it raises an awkward question: if you helped smash the house, why should anyone trust you to rebuild it?

To blame the machinery of state for the failures of its operators is the last refuge of the political scoundrel.

A History Lesson for the ‘Revolutionary’

Zahawi’s choice of historical metaphor is revealing. He calls for a “glorious revolution”.

We assume he refers to the events of 1688. In the popular imagination, this was a triumph of liberty. In historical reality, it was a coup by the landed aristocracy and the merchant class to secure their property rights against the Crown. It was a transfer of power from one elite to another, cementing the rule of the oligarchy for centuries.

It did nothing for the common man. It was a revolution for the rich, by the rich.

How fitting, then, that Zahawi should invoke it.

This is a man whose defining moment in office was not a policy triumph, but a scandal involving his own personal wealth.

Let us recall the facts. Zahawi was sacked by Rishi Sunak after an independent ethics adviser found he had breached the Ministerial Code. He failed to disclose that his tax affairs were under investigation by HMRC. He eventually paid a penalty to settle the dispute, reportedly in the region of £5 million.

For a man who settled a multimillion-pound tax bill while serving as the custodian of the nation’s finances to now lecture the public on “virtue-signalling” is a grotesquerie.

The Reform Lifeboat

Why does this matter?

It matters because it exposes the fraud at the heart of Reform UK. Nigel Farage insists his party is not “Conservative 2.0”. Yet he welcomes Zahawi, a man who embodies the very establishment rot Farage claims to despise.

If you are truly anti-establishment, you do not roll out the red carpet for the former Chairman of the Conservative Party.

This is not a rebellion. It is a lifeboat.

As the Conservative Party disintegrates, its primary architects are seeking sanctuary. They are shedding their blue rosettes, pinning on turquoise ones, and hoping the public suffers from collective amnesia.

They rely on the premise that if they shout loudly enough about “woke nonsense” and “bureaucracy,” we will forget who built the bureaucracy. We will forget who presided over the economic decline. We will forget the austerity, the decay of public services, and the looting of the public purse during the pandemic.

The False Choice

There will be those who argue that Zahawi’s defection is genuine. They will say he has seen the error of his ways, that he is a “convert” to the cause of national sovereignty.

This is a comforting fiction…

The reality is colder. These men are not guided by ideology, but by survival. They sense the shifting wind. They see that the Conservative brand is toxic, perhaps terminally so. They move to Reform not to change the system, but to ensure they remain atop it.

It is the politics of the chameleon.

When Zahawi speaks of “taking back control,” he does not mean handing power to the people. He means reasserting the control of his class – the asset-rich, the tax-efficient, the politically mobile- under a new banner.

The defecting Tory grandee is not a sign of change. It is proof that the British political class views parties not as vehicles for principles, but as shells for personal ambition.

Real reform does not come from the men who broke the country. It does not come from tax-avoiding Chancellors seeking a new audience. It comes from a rejection of the entire economic orthodoxy that men like Zahawi and Farage share.

They may change their ties. They may change their parties. But they cannot change what they are.

“They are the establishment. And they are laughing at us.”

Zahawi calls for a revolution; he is merely rearranging the heaters along the stalls of his stables.