Reform UK’s Zia Yusuf has suggested that Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick, who both defected from the Conservatives, need to “take responsibility” for the last government’s record on immigration.
Yusuf also said he disagreed with Braverman’s claim that people from ethnic minority backgrounds can be British but not English.
Jenrick served as minister for immigration (attending cabinet) from October 2022 to December 2023. He resigned on 6 December 2023 over the government’s proposed Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill, which he argued did not go far enough in seeking to operationalise the Rwanda deportations scheme.
Jenrick currently serves as Reform UK’s Treasury spokesperson.
Braverman twice served as home secretary under Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak from 2022 to 2023. She was dismissed from cabinet by Sunak in November 2023 following controversy over an opinion piece she wrote for the Times concerning the policing of protests.
Braverman was appointed as Reform’s education spokesperson in February 2026.
Yusuf, who serves as Reform’s home affairs spokesperson, has been at the centre of tensions within the party over its recruitment of a series of former Conservative MPs.
In a post to X last week, Yusuf wrote that the “quisling Tory ministers who betrayed our country must never be allowed to seize control again”.
Speaking to Sky News on Tuesday morning, Yusuf was asked whether this comment included Jenrick and Braverman.
He responded: “Well, you have a concept called collective responsibility. That’s just a fact. The reality is that I think everybody in that Conservative government that did things that were not only damaging to the country, but were literally the opposite of the things that they promised to do, need to take responsibility for that.
“Look, I wasn’t in those rooms. I don’t know the private conversations that might have been had. But I still stand by the fact that there is a concept of collective responsibility.”
Collective responsibility is a key constitutional convention dictating that all members of the government are jointly responsible for its policies and decisions and must publicly support them, regardless of any private reservations.
Yusuf was challenged that this convention might be especially pertinent for ministers in the Home Office when it came to immigration policy.
He said: “Well, yes… there are many more, I mean you’re choosing to name two. I assure you there’s a lot more former Tory ministers inside the Tory party…
“I was looking on, as the Tories claimed they were going to cut immigration to the tens of thousands and then did the complete opposite. And I do think there is collective responsibility for that.”
Yusuf also distanced himself from Braverman over her position on Englishness. In February 2025, Braverman authored an article for the Telegraph arguing that English national identity is rooted in ancestry and ethnicity, stating she considered herself British Asian but not English due to a lack of “generational ties to English soil”.
Braverman has since defended and doubled down on these remarks.
Yusuf told Sky News: “In my view Ashley Cole is the best English fullback in history, and I won’t take any other position. So in my view, Ashley Cole is English. I think the argument that he’s not English doesn’t hold water with me.”
He said Braverman was “entitled to her view” and that it was “important that we listen to people, you know, including white English people who take the view that they are worried about some of the demographics in this country”.
But he said the idea that black England footballers, and other ethnic minority sportspeople such as Nasser Hussain, “aren’t English is an alien concept to me”.
He added: “I would respectfully disagree with people, who make the opposite argument.”
Kemi Badenoch, the leader of the Conservative Party, criticised Braverman over her position on Englishness in her keynote address to Tory conference last week.
Badenoch said she did not want to live in “a country run by people who threaten journalists, who call veterans traitors and debate whether my mixed-race children are English”.
She said: “I don’t want to explain to my son when we’re watching our brilliant England team play football that some people don’t think our black players are English.
“I remember back in the day when Ian Wright and John Barnes were playing. Nobody was questioning whether they were English.
“We certainly didn’t have sitting MPs questioning whether they were English. We must not let these people take us backwards. That is not the country we are.
“Reform MPs are openly questioning people’s identity. They are not like us. We are not like them. We are different. We are the Conservative Party.”
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