Reform UK burka row is ‘storm in a teacup’

Former Reform UK chairman Zia Yusuf has called a row over a social media post – in which he said it was “dumb” for one of his MPs to call for a burka ban – a “storm in a teacup”.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Yusuf said he regretted the post and that “exhaustion led to a poor decision”.

Shortly after criticising MP Sarah Pochin, Yusuf quit as chairman saying that trying to get Reform UK elected was not “a good use of my time”.

However, two days later he returned to work for the party albeit in a different role, leading the party’s Doge unit, a team inspired by the US Department of Government Efficiency, set up by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

The initiative aims to cut wasteful spending in the councils Reform now controls.

Asked why he had resigned as chairman, Yusuf said: “I’ve been working pretty much non-stop, virtually no days off.

“It is very difficult to keep going at that pace.”

He said one of the reasons he had “changed his decision so quickly” and returned to work for the party, was that he had been “inundated” by supportive messages from Reform voters and members.

The series of events began last Wednesday when Pochin, the newly-elected MP for Runcorn and Helsby, asked Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer if he would join France and Denmark in banning the burka, a veil worn by some Muslim women that covers the face and body, “in the interests of public safety”.

The following day Yusuf, who is a Muslim, posted on X: “I do think it’s dumb for a party to ask the PM if they would do something the party itself wouldn’t do”.

Speaking to the BBC on Monday, Yusuf said “the thing that frustrated me at the time” was that Pochin had not chosen to ask something that was party policy.

Asked for his views on a ban, he said: “If I was an MP I would think about it very deeply, I think I probably would be in favour of banning face coverings in public writ large, not just the burka.

“I’m very queasy and uneasy about banning things that for example would be unconstitutional in the US but we have a particular situation in the UK.”

He said he did not believe Islam was “a threat to the country” but added that the UK had “a problem with assimilation”.

Commenting on the row during a visit to Port Talbot in Wales, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said the party had “hit a speed bump” and joked it had been going over the speed limit.

He said Yusuf has “lost his rag” and put out an “intemperate comment or two” but added: “It was pretty clear by the next morning he quickly regretted what he had done.

“He made a mistake and plunged us into a difficult place. I forgave him, I said ‘don’t do it again’ but I forgave him.”

Over the weekend, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch was also asked her views on banning the burka.

She told the Telegraph: “People should be allowed to wear whatever they want, not what their husband is asking them to wear or what their community says that they should wear.”

However, she said that organisations should be able to decide what their staff wear and that she asked people coming to her constituency surgeries to remove face coverings “whether it’s a burka or a balaclava”.

“I’m not talking to people who are not going to show me their face,” she added.

The Muslim Council of Britain accused her of “desperation” adding: “Kemi Badenoch isn’t setting the agenda – she’s scrambling to keep up with Reform UK’s divisive rhetoric.”