Zahawi defection pushes Reform’s vaccine scepticism into spotlight | Nadhim Zahawi

There was no shortage of ammunition for reporters looking to bombard Nadhim Zahawi with questions when the former Conservative Chancellor was announced as Reform’s newest member on Monday.

But a persistent line of questioning appeared to send the asylum seeker into genuine rage: Did he reject the views of a doctor allowed by Reform to use the main stage at the annual conference to claim that Covid vaccines launched by Zahawi himself as vaccines minister during the pandemic were responsible for the cancers of King Charles and the Princess of Wales?

Would he have tried to change Reformation’s medical policies if he had been influenced by the same doctor who was, as the party chairman has previously admitted, skeptical of vaccination?

“That was a really stupid question and it doesn’t even deserve an answer,” Zahawi told a Daily Telegraph reporter, repeating the same sentence when another reporter asked the same question.

But far from the posh Westminster venue that Reform has chosen for Zahawi’s launch, his recruitment has caused unrest among Reform UK members who have made hostility to the Covid vaccine program an article of faith.

The party’s Facebook groups took action as a small but significant number of members said they would resign their membership.

However, a dimension of Islamophobia re-emerged among party members. Fresh from their fury over the announcement of Laila Cunningham as Reform’s candidate for London mayor, Zahawi’s appointment was cited by the same vaccine skeptics as another example of the “Muslim takeover” of Nigel Farage’s party.

The party’s policy chief, Ziya Yusuf, has long been the target of racist anger from some Reform members and critics of the party on the right.

In response to Zahawi’s departure, one member of a private Reform Facebook group posted: “Another ex-Tory, another Muslim and another vaccine supporter, I’m sorry to say but he’s fast losing my Reform support.”

The comment, made about a 135,000-member group of the party’s leading figures, was just one of a number of similar comments made on other online platforms used by the group and Reform members.

“I don’t trust the vaccine distributor advocating amnesty for illegal immigrants,” another added.

Another added: “yeah most of us will be thinking the same thing, especially those of us whose son is severely disabled by the jib. [sic] pushed by him.”

While Farage initially gave qualified support to vaccines during the pandemic, he later turned to a more skeptical view and then hostility to the World Health Organization.

he was Accused of “flirting with vaccine conspiracy” After lying earlier this month that people were told they should continue to get a Covid vaccine every six months.

Other high-profile figures, such as Richard Tice, have long expressed doubts about the safety and necessity of the vaccine. Last month, it was revealed that a third of Reform council leaders across the country had expressed vaccine-skeptical views and openly questioned public health measures keeping millions safe.

But such views in the party reached their nadir when a controversial doctor was given top billing at the Reform Party conference and used his speech to claim the Covid vaccine was causing cancer in members of the royal family.

The speech was given by British cardiologist Aseem Malhotra, who was appointed as a senior adviser to US health secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy and was described by Reform chairman David Bull as someone who helped write the party’s health policy.

The issue may continue to be a source of fissures within the party. Among the 20 councilors (mostly Conservatives) who defected to the party last week was Dr., a former president of the British International Association of Physicians and a policy leader at the British Medical Association and other respected health organisations. Chandra Kanneganti was also present.

Kanneganti, who cited the high cost of living, immigration and pressure on public services as the reasons for his departure, said that he would try to share his experiences in developing Reform’s health policies and that he did not agree with the views expressed by figures such as Malhotra.

“I have national expertise on this issue and hopefully I will be involved in the discussions,” Kanneganti said. was in the foreground He urges the public to get vaccinated and talked about how the pandemic has exposed ethnic inequalities.

“I have only recently joined but I hope I can express my views and guide truly evidence-based policy,” he told the Guardian. “It’s about following the evidence but also not forcing people to accept something they disagree with.

“There’s a lot of misinformation about this on social media, but all the scientific evidence shows that getting vaccinated is much, much safer than not getting vaccinated; the important thing is to get this point across.”

Zahawi, for his part, refused several times this week to say whether he had been given any assurances about Reform’s stance on vaccines before joining, but said: “I wouldn’t be sitting here, or Nigel wouldn’t be sitting next to me, if we didn’t agree that we were doing the right thing to deliver the vaccination program to the nation.”

But Bull was more measured in an interview on Talk TV last week when he came under pressure from callers angry about Zahawi’s departure and his role in vaccines.

One man said that he and his wife were disappointed and that no explanation could secure their votes or the votes of many of their friends.

Bull replied: “Remember, Nadhim has no official role. He has just joined us. Nigel, Richard and I have not changed our stance on compulsory vaccinations.”