image credit: the telegraph. Zia Yusuf co-founded luxury concierge app Velocity Black before selling it for £233 million
This Muslim entrepreneur gave hundreds of thousands of pounds to Reform UK, stating the UK had “lost control of our borders”.
Reform UK says Zia Yusuf’s gift is their largest of the general election campaign.
Muslim groups have criticized Reform UK leader Nigel Farage for saying more Muslims don’t share British values.
Reacting to BBC criticism that Reform UK members are racist, Mr. Yusuf stated the party leadership “feel very strongly that we should protect British values and put British people of all religions and creeds first.”
The BBC reports that the 37-year-old would fight for Reform UK as well as donate.
He told The Telegraph, which first reported his donation,: “I love Britain and I’m a patriot, a British Muslim patriot, which I believe the vast majority of Muslims in the UK are.”
Last year, Mr. Yusuf sold his premium concierge app Velocity Black for £31m and told the BBC that “unsustainable” net migration levels were making it tougher for legal migrants to assimilate and straining the NHS.
They lost control of their frontiers. In my opinion. My statement is impartial,” he told the BBC.
Entrepreneur whose parents immigrated to Britain from Sri Lanka in the 1980s and worked in the NHS told BBC “we need a grown-up discussion about immigration without name-calling”.
His “patriotic duty” was to sponsor Reform UK and Nigel Farage.
Last month, Mr. Farage told Sky News: “We have a growing number of young people in this country who do not subscribe to British values, [who] in fact loathe much of what we stand for
Was he referring about Muslims? “We are.”
He used “horribly Islamophobic, racist and hate-filled rhetoric of misinformation,” according to Muslim Council of Britain secretary general Zara Mohammed.
Reform UK claimed Mr. Yusuf’s lump sum gift was donated “very recently” and not yet in Electoral Commission donation numbers.
According to the Electoral Commission, Reform UK raised £140,000 in the first week of the campaign, compared to Labour’s £927,000, Conservatives’ £575,000, and Lib Dems’ £45
Mr. Yusuf, from Scotland, went to the south of England with his parents and got a partial scholarship at Hampton School in Middlesex.
He left Goldman Sachs for Velocity Black with an old school classmate.
He quit the Conservative Party because Rishi Sunak’s cabinet couldn’t “make difficult decisions.”
Mr. Yusuf claimed the PM cannot “credibly govern” despite similarities to Mr Sunak, both sons of migrants who joined finance after attending premium fee-paying colleges.
“Whatever is in the hearts of Conservative leaders, the reality is they are so disunited, and when there is so much infighting in the party,” said.
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