Journalists seeking to pepper Nadhim Zahawi with questions had no shortage of ammunition when the former Conservative Party adviser was revealed as Islah’s latest recruit on Monday.
But one persistent question seems to have sparked real anger in the dissident: Did he dismiss the views of a doctor whom reform has allowed to use the main stage at its annual conference to claim that Covid vaccines, which Zahawi himself introduced as vaccines minister during the pandemic, were responsible for King Charles and the Princess of Wales getting cancer?
Will he seek to change medical reform policies if they are influenced, as the party leader previously admitted, by the same vaccine-skeptic doctor?
“That was a really stupid question and not even worth answering,” Zahawi told a Daily Telegraph journalist, repeating the sentence when another reporter asked it again.
However, far from the lavish Westminster headquarters that the Reform movement chose for Zahawi’s unveiling, his recruitment has caused concern among members of the Reform movement in the UK whose hostility to the Covid vaccine program has become an article of faith.
Party Facebook groups lit up with a small but significant number of members saying they would resign their membership.
In addition, a wave of Islamophobia among party members has reared its head again. After their anger was renewed after Leila Cunningham was revealed as the Reform Party’s candidate for mayor of London, some vaccine skeptics saw Zahawi’s appointment as another example of a “Muslim takeover” of Nigel Farage’s party.
Its political head, Zia Youssef, has long been the target of racist anger from some Islah members and right-wing critics of the party.
“Sorry to say, another former Tory member, another Muslim and another one pushed the vaccine, but Reform is fast losing my support,” one member posted on a private Reform Facebook group, in response to Zahawi’s defection.
This comment, made to a group of 135,000 members, including key party figures, was just one of many comments in a similar vein across it and in other online spaces used by Islah members.
Another added: “I am not filled with confidence, the man who spread the vaccine, the man who called for amnesty for illegal immigrants.”
Another added: “Yes, many of us would be thinking the same way, especially with our son who is severely disabled because of his arm [sic] Driven by him.”
While Farage initially offered qualified support for vaccines during the pandemic, he later shifted to a more skeptical, and then hostile, view of the World Health Organization.
It was Accused of “flirting with the vaccine conspiracy” After falsely saying earlier this month that people had been told they needed to continue getting Covid jabs every six months.
Other prominent figures, such as Richard Tice, have long raised doubts about the safety and necessity of the vaccine. Last month, a third of reform leaders across the country were found to have expressed skeptical views on vaccines, publicly questioning public health measures that are keeping millions safe.
But such views in the party hit rock bottom when a controversial doctor took the top job at the Reform Party conference and used his speech to claim the Covid vaccine caused cancer in the royal family.
The speech was delivered by Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who was appointed senior adviser to US Health Secretary and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, and whom Reform Chairman David Ball described as someone who helped write the party’s health policy.
This issue may remain a source of divisions within the party. Among the 20 councilors who defected to the party last week – most of them Tories – was Dr Chandra Kanniganty, a former president of the British Medical Association International who has taken on policy leadership at the British Medical Association and other prestigious health bodies.
While he cited the cost of living, migration and pressure on public services as reasons for his defection, Kaniganty said he would also seek to share his experience when it comes to developing health reform policies and that he did not agree with the views expressed by figures like Malhotra.
“I have national experience on this matter and I hope to participate in the discussions,” Kaniganti said. He was in the lead to urge the public to get vaccinated and spoke about how the pandemic has exposed racial inequalities.
“I’ve only just joined but I hope I can express my views and drive policy that is actually evidence-based,” he told the Guardian. “It’s about following the evidence and at the same time not forcing people to accept something they don’t agree with.
“There’s a lot of misinformation on social media, but all the scientific evidence shows that getting vaccinated is much safer than not getting vaccinated; it’s about getting the point across.”
As for Zahawi, he declined several times this week to say whether he had been given any assurances about Reform’s position on vaccines before joining, but he said: “I will not sit here, and Nigel will not sit next to me, if we do not agree that we have done the right thing to deliver the vaccine program to the nation.”
However, Paul was more moderate when he came under pressure in an interview last week on Talk TV from callers angry about Zahawi’s defection and his role on vaccines.
One man said that he and his wife felt frustrated, and there was no explanation to guarantee their vote or the vote of many of their friends.
Paul replied: “Remember, Nadeem has no official role. He has just joined us. Nigel, Richard and I have not changed our position on compulsory vaccinations.”