Calling to protect what he calls “British values”. Claiming he was “borderline depressed” when Nigel Farage said he wasn’t standing in the election. Accusing the Labour party of being “race-obsessed” and inciting the “violent thuggery” taking place across Britain.
These are just some of the headlines that have swirled around Zia Yusuf in recent weeks. He is the multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur and Reform mega-donor who just replaced Richard Tice as the party’s new chairman.
Scotland-born Yusuf, 37, a self-described “British Muslim patriot”, whose parents came to Britain from Sri Lanka in the 1980s, might sound like an unlikely spokesperson for a party putting border-control at the forefront of its aims, but commentators say his appointment is hardly a surprise.
The Goldman Sachs alumni, who earned an estimated £31m from selling his luxury concierge app Velocity Black last year, has long spoken publicly of his admiration for Farage and was the biggest donor to the party during this summer’s general election campaign. "We have lost control of our borders. That's my view. And I think it's an objective statement," he recently told the BBC, adding that the UK needed a “grown-up discussion about immigration without name-calling.”
That his appointment comes amid a growing wave of riots across the country has only added fuel to the flames of those accusing him and his party of being racist and deploying Islamophobic and hate-filled rhetoric. “[We] feel very strongly that we should protect British values and put British people of all religions and creeds first,” was Yusuf’s steadfast response.
From his public school upbringing to the reason his friends stopped inviting him to weddings, this is how Yusuf became Farage’s right-hand man.
Hampton School, LSE, Goldman Sachs
Yusuf describes himself as a British Muslim patriot — “which I believe the vast majority of Muslims in the UK are,” he said recently. His parents came to Britain from Sri Lanka in the 1980s and worked in the NHS: his father as a pediatrician; his mother as a nurse. He was born in Bellshill, a village outside Aberdeen in Scotland, and the family later moved to the south of England, with Yusuf winning a 50 per cent scholarship to attend the elite fee-paying school, Hampton, in west London before going on to study international relations at LSE.
He remembers the night he and his fellow students watched Barack Obama win the 2008 US presidential election. “It was a really important moment, I think, for history,” he has said, looking back. “I had a lot of high hopes at the time.”After university, he became a rising star at the investment bank Goldman Sachs in London, working his way up to the position of director until 2014.
A workaholic ex-City boy with no time to date
Yusuf credits a teenage experience as the inspiration for Velocity Black, the luxury concierge service he co-founded in 2014 for London’s rich and successful.
He was 13 at the time and his father came into the room and asked if he wanted to go to Disney World. Yusuf had always wanted to go to Disney in Paris, but his father said: “We’re not going there, we’re going to the original in Florida!”
The trip was the result of years of scrimping and saving by his parents and a teenage Yusuf was so excited he hardly slept for a month. “It was something to look forward to,” he told an interviewer in 2018, when he was 32 and making headlines as a young, rising star CEO. “That’s what we try to provide at Velocity. It’s about making you feel like a kid again.”
Yusuf founded the company with his old school friend Alex Macdonald, after quitting his high-paying job in the City. He’d been a director at Goldman, and on his way to becoming a partner, but cites the breakdown of one of his mentors as something of a turning point. “This was a guy who’d been at the firm for 24 years and [global chief] Lloyd Blankfein calls him to say he’d made partner,” Yusuf told the Standard in 2018. “He keeled over at his desk and burst into tears. He said to me: ‘I realised instantly it wasn’t worth it, the missed parents’ evenings, all the sacrifices that I made’.”
Velocity Black was designed to be a one-stop app allowing the ultra-rich to book luxe experiences through their phones, from restaurant slots to renting fighter jets or swimming with orca whales in Norway. Membership for the invitation-only concierge cost £2,400 a year, with the average transaction costing $1,800 and the average member making 42 bookings per year.It quickly became a business success story, with thousands of members and clients including the likes of Rita Ora and Ellie Goulding. Yusuf was often pictured with his A-list clients — a photo taken three years after founding the company shows him posing with the likes of Lottie Moss in Mykonos — but he told the Standard the following year that he didn’t have time to date or go on holiday because of his commitment to work.
Six years ago, he admitted he was such a workaholic his friends had given up inviting him to weddings. “I am single, I think my personality might have something to with it,” he told the Standard in 2018. “Do I get the time to go on dates? No, not really. I come from a traditional Asian background and when I go home my mum asks me when I’m getting married.”
He told the same reporter that he never takes holidays. “Over the last three years I have taken zero holiday. I have tried, if I go to a beach I just end up thinking about this business.”
From Farage mega-donor to his right-hand man
Yusuf’s political career trajectory has been a steep one. He voted Conservative for most of his adult life, recently questioning whether he’d even remembered to cancel his direct debit, but says he eventually decided that Rishi Sunak could no longer "credibly govern", and that the country needed the “bold change” offered by Nigel Farage, a man he’d met a decade previously at a cocktail party hosted by former UKIP treasurer Stuart Wheeler. They have reportedly kept in touch ever since.
His first public foray into politics began in June — just a year after he and Macdonald sold their company for a reported £235m, making Yusuf around £31 million — when Farage decided to stand as an MP for Clacton-on-Sea.
Yusuf, who has claimed he was “borderline depressed” when the Reform leader originally said he wasn’t standing in the election, was delighted, donating a six-figure sum to the party and embarking on a round of interviews on the likes of GB News. His speech on restoring British values at a Reform rally in Birmingham at the end of June attracted particular attention, with commentators calling him everything from Farage’s apprentice to the party’s potential future leader — and certainly a threat to the Conservatives.
“He should scare the Tories,” said one insider. “At the moment it’s hard to see where that party goes without Nigel. You add a young dynamic businessman who has time on his hands, a f***-ton of money and the ability to communicate with the public, and you have a problem.”
What a phenomenal #RallyforReform event at the NEC! Thank you to all of you 5000 patriots who showed up.
— Zia Yusuf (@ZiaYusufUK) June 30, 2024
Here’s my speech - a love letter to Great Britain. pic.twitter.com/c7bQLXODXC
He was announced as Tice’s successor as party chairman last month, to a mixed response. “I voted Reform to get Britain back for the British, not for it to be led by a Muslim. I will be resigning my membership tomorrow,” one X user tweeted. “I personally don’t buy the ‘good Muslim’ line. If he believes in the Qur’an, and is still chairman at the next election, I won’t be voting Reform again,” wrote another.Others have been more supportive, saying they absolutely agree with his comments on Labour sowing division among the British people, and that he is devoted to his country.
Yusuf himself says he wants to “professionalise” the Reform party. He has blamed Labour for “inciting” the riots across the country at the moment, and hit back at accusations that his high-profile education and career postings have put him out of touch with ordinary people. He claims his parents working for the NHS and having a pet husky dog helps him to engage with people from “all over the community”.
Do you agree with Zia Yusuf? pic.twitter.com/jhxxrG1RkC
— UK Updates (@UKUpdates_co_uk) August 3, 2024
He has also hit back at comments accusing him of deploying a “horribly Islamophobic, racist and hate-filled rhetoric of misinformation”, saying he believes his view that Britain has lost control of its borders is an “objective statement”.
“This idea that when we talk about British values, only a certain race can subscribe to those values, I think it's totally incorrect,” he has said. “I hope that people can see that. I am proof that that's not the case. And by the way, that is, I believe the vast, vast majority of immigrants in this country are patriots and they care deeply about this country.”
Will he go onto run for MP of his great country, then? “I’m absolutely open to it,” he said recently. “This is a sincere comment. I will serve in whatever capacity Nigel asks of me.”
First though, he is focused on helping Farage become Britain’s next prime minister. "This is just the beginning,” he says. “The important work of professionalising the party, building national infrastructure and continuing to grow membership has already begun."
