Nigel Farage wants to create a US-style Cabinet “of all talents” (Image: Getty)
Nigel Farage wants to create a US-style Cabinet of “all the talents”, with complete outsiders running crucial government departments, if he storms to victory at the next general election.
As many as half of the Cabinet ministers in a bombshell Reform UK government could be members of the House of Lords rather than elected MPs, as is traditional in British politics.
The controversial approach would allow Reform to appoint figures from a dramatically wider experience pool, but also provokes explosive questions about parliamentary accountability and democratic norms. The news comes as Trump smears UK in Mark Zuckerberg tech-bro meetup: ‘Strange things are happening’.
Details of the radical thinking are revealed in an explosive interview with The Telegraph by Zia Yusuf, who has emerged as one of Reform’s most influential figures.
‘Galactic-level’ talent hunt begins
Mr Yusuf, a party official, said the search for potential Cabinet ministers was already under way, and suggested people with “galactic-level” talent were interested. He refused to give specifics.
He also threw his name in the ring to be Reform’s chancellor if the party wins the next election, arguing that his business background made him well placed to run the economy.
Reform’s annual conference in Birmingham takes place on Friday and Saturday and is built around the theme of “the next step”.
There is more media and business interest in the conference than ever, with the party leading significantly in the opinion polls. About one in three voters say they would vote for Reform now.
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Challenge to convince voters
But Mr Farage and his senior colleagues have the challenge of convincing the electorate that they have a plan for government and an effective policy platform for changing the country.
Currently, Reform has no full shadow cabinet – unlike Labour and the Tories in opposition – creating uncertainty about who would lead departments if the party took office.
Mr Yusuf said the plan was to unveil a prospective Cabinet much closer to the election, meaning voters may have to wait until 2029 to learn the proposed team of Reform ministers.
Reform had only five MPs elected into the House of Commons last summer, picking up a sixth in a by-election. Two now no longer sit as Reform MPs.
Household names ‘coming forward’
Explaining the approach to creating a Cabinet-in-waiting, Mr Yusuf said: “The number of people who are coming forward saying that they want to help Reform, either in the background or potentially front line, is growing all of the time.
“Some of these people are household names. I’m not going to give you them, because I’m not going to betray confidences. But these are incredible – this is galactic-level talent that we’d be very proud to have serving our country.
“As Nigel has said, one of our diagnoses for why talent density is so poor is because inevitably you have a situation where our health secretary is also, for example, an MP.
“We don’t think it makes sense necessarily for the minister of defence to also be doing constituency surgeries about the chlorine level in the local swimming pool.
“Now, that’s an important issue, but I don’t think one person is necessarily best suited to do both of those things. So a lot of our Cabinet ministers, a lot of the people Nigel puts in his Cabinet – not all of them, but a lot of them – will not be MPs.”
Asked whether they would therefore be Lords, Mr Yusuf said: “That is the most likely scenario, yes.”
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Best candidates ‘don’t want constituency work’
He said there should be no limit on how many Cabinet members were from the Lords, adding: “These are decisions for Nigel. I wouldn’t be prepared to put any upper limit on that.
“I think we’ve got to optimise for the best possible people, and maybe the best possible people don’t want to do all of the stuff that is involved in being an MP.”
Asked again whether as many as half of Reform’s proposed Cabinet could be peers, he said: “Again, it’s Nigel’s decision, but I think so.”
Radical departure from tradition
The approach is a radical departure from how political parties in power have approached constructing their Cabinets for generations.
It is not uncommon for a small number of peers to be in the Cabinet. There is always a leader of the House of Lords and occasionally another Cabinet minister position.
Lord Cameron, the former Conservative leader, was brought back into frontline politics in 2023 by Rishi Sunak and made foreign secretary, meaning one of the four great offices of state was run by a peer.
It is also not uncommon for prime ministers to appoint outside figures to ministerial posts. Sir Keir Starmer made Lord Timpson, the probation expert, the prisons minister, and Lord Vallance, the former government chief scientific adviser, as science minister.
Zia Yusuf has emerged as one of Reform’s most influential figures. (Image: Getty)
Proposal is radical change to British politics
The scale of government departments run by unelected peers that Reform has outlined, however, is unlike anything seen in modern British political history.
The approach will raise questions about parliamentary accountability since, under the usual rules, MPs cannot grill peers in the House of Commons as they do usual Cabinet ministers.
Also, giving more than a dozen people who have not been elected the power to run whole departments of government, such as the country’s NHS services or justice system, would trigger questions about whether democratic norms are being upended.
Echoes of American system
The approach has echoes of the American system, where the US president, once elected and in post, is free to appoint whomever they want to head departments in the executive branch, providing the US Senate approves the choices.
In Donald Trump’s two terms, he has appointed military generals, TV hosts, former congressmen, one-time political rivals and prominent supporters to cabinet positions.
Sir Keir Starmer is under growing pressure to name peers for Reform when the next Lords appointments are recommended.
The Guardian has reported that plans are being made for a new set of Labour peers to be unveiled imminently. Reform, despite its polling position, has no members in the Lords at present.