Nigel Farage and Nathan Gill campaigning for the Brexit Party in 2019.A senior Reform UK official was left squirming over a former leader of the party who has admitted making pro-Russia statements for cash.
Nathan Gill, who led Reform in Wales, last week pleaded guilty at the Old Bailey to eight counts of bribery between 2018 and 2019.
His activities were said to include making pro-Russian statements about events in Ukraine in the European Parliament and in opinion pieces to news outlets.
Gill was first elected as a UKIP member of the European Parliament in 2014 and became an MEP for the Brexit Party after the UK formally left the EU in 2020.
He led Reform UK’s 2021 Welsh Parliament election campaign but is no longer a member of the party.
On BBC Breakfast on Monday, Reform policy chief Zia Yusuf said what he had done was “appalling and totally unacceptable and treacherous”.
However, he then went on to accuse Labour of “smears and name calling” to deflect from the government’s record.
Asked by presenter Jon Kay if anyone else in Reform shared Gill’s views, Yusuf said: “The first time I heard his name or seen his name was in news reports.”
As he insisted “most people in the senior leadership team” of Reform had never heard of him, Kay pointed out that they had just shown a number of images of him with party leader Nigel Farage.
“We’ve just shown our viewers pictures of Nigel Farage with his arm around him holding a Union Flag – they obviously knew one another pretty well,” he said.
Yusuf said: “Whatever that footage is, Nigel meets tens of thousands of people on an annual basis ultimately. He can’t be held accountable for the actions of everyone he comes into contact with.
“Given he has pleaded guilty, I have no concerns in telling you that is atrocious behaviour and we condemn it.
“Reform is a very nascent political party and in the end what we’ve got to stick to is the issues that matter to British people, and smearing Reform, calling Reform voters names, calling us racist, these issues no longer matter.”
Watch the exchange below:
'What are voters to make of the fact your former leader in Wales pleaded guilty to accepting bribes for making statements in the European Parliament in favour of Russia?'
Zia Yusuf from Reform UK was questioned on #BBCBreakfast after Nathan Gill admitted the offences while he… pic.twitter.com/ZdSc5ztUtc
Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·