Reform activist Arron Banks has said the party’s home affairs spokesman, Zia Yusuf, ‘hates’ the Conservatives and that he ‘isn’t far behind’.
Speaking on GB News he said: “I think it has been a tough time for Reform, they’d be stupid to say otherwise. But I do think that you know the standards committee is a bit of a kangaroo court.
“It’s made up of six opposition MPs and supposedly lay people. I think it was revealed today at least two of them have got political axes to grind, and so no doubt they’re going to probably rerun it all over again, I would think.
“I think when it comes to Nigel, you can pretty well assume that they’ll have a pop at them all over again.
“But it has been a tough time, but we’re still riding fairly high in the polls, and Burnham doesn’t really seem to have had much of a bounce, other than to have brought in some of the Green voters.
“I think it has been a phenomenal hit job on Nigel from various sources, and I think his persona is normally pretty cheerful and the happy warrior is when he comes over best. But it’s quite difficult when you’re being attacked on such a level to do that.
“So the premise that we should be a bit more, you know, thick skinned makes sense, I think.
“You’ve got to remember it’s a very young party. I mean, it only fought the last election. It’s achieved in 18 months what it took the Tories and Conservatives decades, or you know, could even say 100 years to achieve.
“So it’s going to be more volatile, and there’s going to be disagreements and things going on. It does need to become more tolerant. You know, even the Rupert Lowe thing probably shouldn’t have been allowed to get to where it got to.
“There’s three years to the election, and as Nigel found to his cost, if you’re in third place in a general election, you get squeezed because it’s a, it’s a binary outcome, isn’t it? So whoever gets to the gate, you know, in the lead is going to benefit because you vote as much for who you don’t want as who you do want.
“I think it’s a bit early to be kind of discussing how you bring it all together.
“The Labour candidate only really won [the West of England Mayoralty] because they squeezed the green vote a bit better than we possibly squeeze the Conservatives, but I do think they’re two very different parties.
“Our political views, you wouldn’t be able to put a fag paper between us, but unfortunately, Conservatives in government did the absolute opposite of everything that they’re now espousing opposition.
“And as a businessman, you know, if you wouldn’t rehire the same people that wrecked the company to rebuild it, would you now?
“The Conservatives, you know, probably cost the economy nearly half a trillion quid and delivered the highest electricity prices in the world. That was a Tory policy.
“I think if you take the fault line with Zia, he hates the Conservative Party. I’m pretty close behind him on that, I’ve got to say.
“I don’t believe they’re on the same side. That’s the fundamental problem.
“I also think when you’ve gone into four elections, saying you deliver immigration in the tens of thousands and you let in five or six million people, that there is a credibility issue with what you’re putting forward.”
