Reform breaks silence on ‘treacherous’ Nathan Gill as Farage ally seeks damage limitation
A key ally of Nigel Farage has broken his silence on Reform UK’s former Welsh party leader, who was jailed last week for accepting bribes from Russia.
Zia Yusuf, the party’s former chairman and key member of the Reform leadership, claimed it was “implausible” to link Gill’s crime to the softer stance the party and Mr Farage had taken towards his criticism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Ukraine war.
Mr Yusuf described Gill as “vicious, appalling, awful” in an interview with Sir Trevor Phillips on his Sunday morning political program on Sky News.
Gill, 52, was sentenced to 10-and-a-half years in prison at the Old Bailey on Friday after previously admitting eight bribery charges committed between December 6, 2018 and July 18, 2019.
Ms Justice Cheema-Grubb handed down the sentence, saying the harm he had caused was “profound” and that he had “fundamentally compromised” the integrity of the legislature for the sake of “significant” financial gain.
Gill’s activities included making pro-Russian statements to the European Parliament about events in Ukraine and opinion pieces for news organizations for which he was paid £40,000.
Gill was first elected as a member of the European parliament in 2014, representing Ukip, and his term ended when the UK left the EU in 2020; at this point he was a Brexit Party MP and a close ally of Mr Farage.
He led Reform UK’s 2021 Welsh parliamentary election campaign, but left the party later that year.
Mr Farage has previously said he was “shocked” by the comments and described Gill as a “bad apple”.
However, on his programme, Sir Trevor linked Gill’s activities in the European Parliament, where he asked questions on behalf of Russia in exchange for money, with the positions Reform has taken since then.
Acknowledging that Gill left the party four years ago, he said: “Let me tell you why this matters politically, your former leader in Wales, Mr Nathan Gill… is now starting a long sentence for taking money from the Russians.
“’These guys are soft on Putin, they think the whole war is partly our fault and not his, why should we trust everything they say about Russia, given that one of their own people is taking money from the Russians?’ “There will be many people who say ‘”
Mr Yusuf replied: “I think that would be an incredibly irrational attitude. Look, Nathan Gill, what he did was treacherous, it was terrible, it was terrible. He has now been questioned by the authorities, he deserves the punishment he got.”
“But as you just said, this is a man who is very old history to us. I have never met him. In fact, I had never heard of him until I saw his name with regret in the newspapers.
“So I think it is unreasonable to vilify everyone in Reform and the millions of people across the country who support Nigel and our party.”
